Investigate HIS June 2011

INVESTIGATE

PIKE: INSIDE STORY THE PUSH TO RE-ENTER THE MINE

NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE

WINSTON’S COMEBACK HIS FIRST BIG INTERVIEW

GOFF: victim of a conspiracy KEY: he might need us yet WANTS: a watchdog role MMP: ‘there’s always been a lunatic fringe in Parliament’

The LISTENER Got it WRONG

We fisk the Listener on climate

81 Springbok Tour 30th anniversary remembered with Red Squad’s Ross Meurant

June 2011, $8.60

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June 2011 Issue 125 www.hismagazine.tv

cover

16 1ST UP

Love him or loathe him, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is back, and above the 5% threshold in both the Horizon and HERS magazine polls. In his first major magazine interview since his 2008 defeat, Peters opens up to Ian Wishart

26 BACK INTO PIKE

They told us no one could have survived. HIS magazine challenged that in February, now it looks as though we were right. Ian Wishart has more

30 A CLIMATE FISK

The Listener magazine claims New Zealand is about to drown because of rising seas. Find out just how much the Listener got wrong

34 BREAKER MEURANT It’s been 30 years since the Springbok Tour split the country.

Owen Winter finds out how much police Red Squad boss Ross Meurant has changed since then

26

HIS/contents 6 opinion

6 /EDITOR Speaks for itself, really 8 /COMMUNIQUES Your say 12 /EYES RIGHT Richard Prosser 14 /STEYNPOST Mark Steyn

39 action

40

40 /DRIVE The new Ford FPV-GS 42 /SPORT Chris Forster on the NRL 44 /INVEST Peter Hensley on people who hand over their wallets

42

47 gadgets

48 The latest HTC tablet 49 The Mall 50 Tech: Why are TV ads so loud?

52 Online with Chillisoft

55 mindfuel

56 /ONSCREEN More Pirates 58 /BOOKCASE Michael Morrissey’s winter picks 60 /CONSIDERTHIS Amy Brooke on media mediocrity 62 /GEOPOLITICS Everyone’s a royalist now?

56

00 over in HERS

12 /VACCINE WARS The Govt considers blocking access to schools for unimmunised children 24 /GREEN ENERGY TIMEBOMB Will NZ’s first tidal power station fail catastrophically?

62

editor

Did no one in the Listener office think to ask the obvious question: if the poles are melting catastrophically, is the sea rising to match?

Fisking the Listener

I

6 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

t’s not often in this business that we end up taking apart the work of another magazine, but the Listener’s cover story on global warming and sea level rise demands a response. Evidently it was done to soften up the public for the visit this month of NASA’s chief climate alarmist James Hansen, but as you’ll see from the article in this issue of HIS/HERS it bore no resemblance to reality.

It’s as if some of my fellow media journalists have scared themselves so silly over climate change that they’ve lost their collective senses?

Did no one in the Listener office think to ask the obvious question: if the poles are melting catastrophically, is the sea rising to match?

No, it’s not. Sea levels have not actually risen for the past five years, during what Hansen deceptively called “the hottest decade”. If sea levels don’t go up during the hottest decade, when exactly will they go up?

Take a look at the graph and see for yourself – sea levels are not rising rapidly.

I should be used to misleading claims by journalists and climate activists by now, but in truth it’s a sad state of affairs. Hansen tells audiences we are warming faster than ever before. We are not – global temps routinely experience decades of rapid warming at rates just as high as the ones we’ve seen recently.

Hansen tells audiences Arctic melt is unprece-

dented. It is widely acknowledged there were no SUVs or coal burning factories when this report was written: “It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated. “(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.” – President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817.

Don’t trust the New Zealand media to honestly report the climate debate. They don’t.

www.monacocorp.co.nz/casio Tokyo, Japan

communiques

Volume 10, Issue 125, ISSN 1175-1290 [Print] Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart NZ EDITION Advertising Josephine Martin

09 373-3676 sales@investigatemagazine.com Contributing Writers: Hal Colebatch, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Heidi Wishart Design & Layout Bozidar Jokanovic Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine, PO Box 188, Kaukapakapa, Auckland 0843, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor Ian Wishart Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com

By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 NZ 09 373 3676

By Post: To the PO Box NZ Edition: $85; AU Edition: A$96 Email: editorial@investigatemagazine.com, ian@investigatemagazine.com, australia@investigatemagazine.com, sales@investigatemagazine.com, helpdesk@investigatemagazine.tv All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted.

We take no responsibility for unsolicited material sent to us. Please enclose a stamped, SAE envelope. Inquiries in the first instance should be made via email or fax.

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COVER: NZPA

8 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

YOU AND WHOSE ARMY? Compulsory military training may occupy the unemployed and give some training for a future life as Richard Prosser proposes in the May issue. He assumes potential invaders, and that the reservists and regular forces would successfully repel boarders.

The Australians have invaded already and own half the nation. We need the Chinese and Japanese so badly for consumer and industrial goods that they only need to be patient. The USA seeks trade deals so advantageous to them they also can wait for more of our resources to head off-shore.

The Nats and Act are so keen to sell off our remaining silver that before we undertake the substantial costs of CMT we’ll need the buyers’ permission which they’d give if they won the contract for the training programme.

Against what foe would this people’s army ride to defend us? Neither the 2 million plus defence forces in North Korea, China or Indonesia are likely to be overly terrified by our valiant heroes.

However up to 20 million people may be starving in Southeast Asia through insufficient food production with the Pacific Islands becoming increasingly uninhabitable through rising sea levels leaving New Zealand as an easily available refuge; desperate people will fill half a million watercraft and simply arrive here.

Do we kill the first 100.000 of them before we run out of ammunition and resolve?

Classifying conscientious objectors as cowards betrays ignorance of history. A cursory examination of James Baxter, Sir Guy Powles or the Reverend Ormond Burton among others witnesses to their courage under fire and non-fire. Many in the UK volunteered for the unexploded bomb disposal and mine clearance teams that had the highest rate of death of any unit during World War 2 while saving thousands of lives.

Our most effective and only defence will be continuing good relationships, equitable trading relationships, humanitarian support and creative immigration policies.

John Marcon, North Shore

PROSSER VS FRANK Vince Frank challenges me to refute the arguments of French theoretical economist Frederic Bastiat in support of free trade. I

won’t, because it is not the purity of Bastiat’s theories with which I take issue, nor the lucid and logical cognition of his arguments in favour of them. Rather, it is the very existence of the theory itself to which I object, and the moral, ethical, philosophical, and humanistic choices involved in adopting or supporting that theory.

Vince Frank contends that the Free Market is defined as an environment for exchange in which there exists no compulsion to trade in any particular way. My own understanding is that of an environment unbridled by any regulation of that trade, so perhaps we are arguing about different things.

Bastiat contended that the sole purpose of Government is to defend the right of an individual to life, liberty, and property. Such was his viewpoint, and he is welcome to it, as is Mr Frank. I, however, disagree. I believe that the first responsibility of Government is the Defence of the Nation, both in a directly military sense, and also in any other regard necessary to promote, support, and safeguard the nation state, its people, and their character and culture. I would contend that the defence of the nation’s industries and economic well-being is as important in this regard as the security of the borders themselves.

In society, there is a fundamental philosophical difference between those who propose that the individual is of sole importance, and those who prefer to afford superiority to the collective. Free Marketeers, I would posit, are adherents to the “me first” school of thinking, whilst the other end of the scale is occupied by Communists and their modern day heirs.

Personally, I do not subscribe to either camp. Instead, it is my view that the individual is of great importance, and that his or her rights and freedoms must be recognised and protected by society, but that all individuals also have a degree of duty to their fellow man, and to the society with which they are undeniably connected. I would classify the extreme right as being every bit as unbalanced and unconscionable as the extreme left. I prefer the middle ground; the live-and-let-live social freedom of classical liberalism, the conservative adherence to well-founded tradition, and the sensible level of useful socialism which

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communiques constitutes the centre of New Zealand’s societal and political thinking.

If I were to choose to follow the free market doctrine of the far right, then it would be very difficult for me to find fault with Bastiat’s writings championing it. By the same token, if I were a believer in Communism, the oratory of Marx and Lenin would provide me with powerful and compelling logic to support that particular philosophy.

However I feel a clear moral opposition to both the aforementioned ideologies. I am repulsed by the idea that tradesmen and workers in my own country should go without fair occupation and income, while I support the slave labour of a foreign land for the sake of greater profits for those in between. Tariffs and quotas are the tools with which I believe responsible Government should protect both. Equally, I cannot stomach the concept of individual enterprise, and the creation and attainment of wealth, being suppressed in favour a lowest common denominator, with the benefits of success being artificially redistributed without regard to ability or effort.

Bastiat’s Negative Railroad, like all his theorising, was of course only conceptual; and while, within that theory, his causeand-effect argument follows a logical path, outside of those boundaries, it both ignores human nature and makes no account for nationalistic sentiment. I consider both these things to be of great importance.

It is a revealing indictment of Bastiat’s sense of priorities that he regards both the building of the railway and its deconstruction as being the responsibility of Government, while at the same time presuming that the spoils of any trade conducted via it should be entirely independent of Government - in keeping with Free Market ideology which promotes the socialisation of costs and losses, and the privatisation of profits.

If I, as a consumer, want to procure a chocolate bar for my own consumption or for on sale, a simple cost-risk-benefit analysis might suggest that it is far more expedient for me to surreptitiously steal one from an unattended child than to buy one from a retail or wholesale vendor. My own moral code, however, prohibits such an approach. Vince states that “The free market is not a slightly more civilised version of the Wild West where cowboy boots are replaced by Gucci loafers.” I would

10 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

contend that that is in fact precisely what it is, to the point of saying I couldn’t have put it better myself. The Market, left to its own devices, devolves rapidly into Jungle Law, where the winners are the biggest, the strongest, the hungriest, and the most rapacious. I adhere to my claim that the Playing Field is never level, unless it is made artificially so, by properly constructed and rigidly enforced legislation.

I may not have answered Vince’s challenge in the way he would have preferred, but if I have made my position clear, I suggest he gives his $100 to the Salvation Army instead of me. They are, after all, a practical organisation, who do not concern themselves with –isms and ideologies and academic theorising; they simply get on with doing what is needed and what fits in with human needs and nature at a practical level, much as I believe economics should be doing. In addition, if New Zealand is to have the unworkable insanity of the Free Market foisted upon us yet again, their services will very soon become much more sought after.

Richard Prosser, The Mainland

WHAT ABOUT WILLIE? In observing the rapid development and media coverage of the Mana Party, I find it somewhat disingenuous that Broadcaster Willie Jackson is painting himself as a supporter and member of what Mr Jackson terms the “poor working class”, as Mr Jackson rides “wingman” to Hone Harawira’s latest political tantrum.

Willie Jackson is a multi-millionaire property owner, the CEO of the Manukau Urban Maori Authority, holds millions of dollars in broadcasting contracts, owns a radio station, is a current highly paid broadcaster and commentator in radio, TV, and print media, and is a former MP. As such, Mr Jackson is in the top 1% of income earners in New Zealand, a position that would hardly imbue Mr Jackson with any meaningful empathy for the plight of the poor in my view.

Despite both possession and access to such an astonishing amount of material wealth, Mr Jackson’s commentary on virtually any topic is consistent in one facet: an absolute deficit of reality and fact on an issue at hand, as aptly demonstrated by the pasting Mr Jackson received by Dr David Round, a Constitutional Law

Lecturer on TVNZ “Close Up” regarding a debate on the Treaty of Waitangi.

Overwhelmed by the evidence of history and record, Mr Jackson’s only retort to the evidence was “that’s rubbish”.

Mr Jackson seems very keen for New Zealanders to receive “more education” on the Treaty: might I suggest that Mr Jackson invest some of his own substantial financial resources in getting himself educated on the issues that matter to New Zealand: name-calling is hardly an example of informed debate.

Steve Taylor, Auckland

AND MORE ON HONE I suppose he had little choice, but before agreeing to a public debate with Hone Harawira (Close Up, T.V One, 5/5), Don Brash should have remembered the Biblical proverb about wise men not arguing with fools.

This not to say that Brash is wise, only that compared to Harawira he is. Faint praise indeed!

Just like his sidekick Willie Jackson (whose whole career is based upon nothing but his uncanny knack of interspersing his insulting diatribes with perfectly timed giggles), Harawira can only bring any debate down to his own, abysmal, level.

Radical extremists of this type have turned the common human tendency to believe absolutely whatever is to their advantage, into an art form. Among many other proofs of this is their totally false and self-serving interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

It is sad testimony to the gullibility of New Zealanders that despite the fact that the treaty was conceived by Europeans, written by Europeans and read to the Maori chiefs by Europeans, the radicals and their “politically correct” white patrons have managed to convince so many of us that only Maoris understand it.

It is not love of the democratic ideal in a nation which permits divisive personalities like Harawira and Jackson to rise to prominence and influence, but stupidity or complicity.

There are a diversity of forces currently working to destroy civil society in this country, and the treaty industry is one of them.

Colin Rawle, Dunedin

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11

Richard Prosser

eyes right

In the not-too-distant future, unless we do something about it now, we will be faced with the reality that there are not enough young and working people to both provide, and care for

12 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

Go forth and multiply

T

here is no finer investment for any community,” Winston Churchill once said, “than putting milk into babies.”

The Great Man was right, of course, in more ways than we may appreciate in New Zealand today. The Empire was built on the back of the manpower available to the Royal Navy, at the time when Britannia ruled the waves. The Colonies themselves, this country included, grew from the wellspring of surplus life which overflowed from the burgeoning population of the British Isles. From Imperial Rome to the United States of America, from the Ottoman Empire to the Polynesian migrations of the Pacific, from the westward spread of the Celts to the rise of China, every great surge of human expansion and exploration has stemmed from the generations which rise as a result of booms in birth rates, these being themselves in response to access to better food sources, more resources, land, and industry, which in turn allow for increased birth rates. It is a self-replenishing cycle which both repeats and feeds on itself.

Families need new babies in order that they may continue to live, grow, and flourish. So too do societies, nations, and civilisations. In fact they need new babies not only to go forward, but indeed to stay in one place; because in human population terms, it isn’t possible to merely tread water without actually going backwards.

Western civilisation today is in serious danger of doing just that. The hedonistic materialism of our modern lifestyles, combined with – and partly to blame for – our falling birth rate, means that the populations

of the developed world are quite simply not replacing themselves. Many Western countries are in a state of terminal decline, and within two generations, some will be past the point of no return.

Simple mathematics means that even to maintain stability, any natural population of a species – homo sapiens being no exception – must maintain a birth rate of more than two live offspring per female, just to ensure that, allowing for natural attrition (and the fact that males are not able to carry young), the generation to follow it is able to continue.

Japan and Russia are already on the slippery slope towards depopulation, and many of the nations of Europe are statistically growing only because the birth rates amongst their small populations of ethnically non-indigenous migrants are exponentially greater than those of their host peoples. France and Spain, two of the old colonial powerhouses of Europe, are growing solely because of immigration from their old African and South American colonies, and Portugal and the Netherlands are barely breaking even. Italy, Germany, Sweden, as well as many of the nations of the old eastern bloc, are in a similar position.

New Zealand is actually – if only just – keeping the population decline wolf from the door, with a live birth rate of 2.13 children per woman; considerably higher than that of the Australians, who are nearing dire straits at less than 1.90 and are offering cash payments to parents who opt to have additional children. Canada is already lost, trailing at around 1.5, and the United States is only managing to keep pace with

good old New Zealand thanks to the fecundity of her migrants – legal and not – from South and Central America. Curiously, Godzone’s new flower of youth is not, as one might expect, primarily the product of our seemingly unstoppable flood of immigrants and supposed refugees, or the unwed mothers of the baby-factory ghettos of South Auckland; no, it’s Otago and Southland who are leading the charge, and on top of that, most of the new mothers are married or living in happy stability with the fathers of their children. Many of them are also people who have chosen, for various reasons, to wait until they are late in their thirties and even into their forties before having families.

There may indeed be hope for the future yet.

Why is any of this important? Because not only are the populations of the world’s wealthier and longer-established nations shrinking or slowing, they are aging as well, and this should be sounding alarm bells for us. Europe and Japan are canaries in the mineshaft for nations such as New Zealand. Advances in medical treatment mean that people are living longer even as they choose to have fewer children. In the not-too-distant future, unless we do something about it now, we will be faced with the reality that there are not enough young and working people to both provide, and care for, what is going to be an unprecedentedly large older generation. When the retirees outnumber the workers, we are all in trouble.

The blunt truth is that all societies need new young folk, and if we’re not breeding enough of them ourselves, we will have to import them from somewhere else; and the elephant in the room is that those people from somewhere else may not share our values and perceptions any more than they share our culture or history.

When the United States is mostly Mexican, it will still be the United States, but it won’t be the US that we know now. When France, and Germany, and even Britain, have Muslim majorities – and in France’s case that could be as soon as 2050 – will they still be the nations we have grown up with, in anything but name? The prospect of Sharia Law being dispensed from the Palaise Bourbon, the Bundestag, or the Halls of Westminster, would suggest not.

We are a nation descended from migrants, and we will always need a measure of immigration; not, in this writer’s view, to the point that we lose the very beauty and appeal of what is our empty land, or as an excuse for failing to train and employ our own people, but for the skills and expertise that we do not possess ourselves, and for those who truly share our vision and character.

Your favourite commentator, as I have mentioned before, is the son of migrants. My fiancée is originally English and our baby daughter is a dual national; and that path, I make no apology for asserting, is the best way for this country to avert our looming population decline – along, of course, with taking the measures necessary to encourage expats to return home. A million New Zealand-born citizens now live overseas, which is a sad indictment on the failure of successive Governments to build the kind of nation and economy where their talents can secure fair reward, and where the entire country can reap the benefits of their input.

It is a travesty because every home-grown New Zealander we lose overseas has to be replaced, all too often by second-rate cast-offs from the third world, or from nations who struggle to speak our language, let alone appreciate and adopt our values. Kiwis crossing the Tasman bolt straight into Australian society without even needing a conversion kit, and when they go, they take their education, their drive, and their culture with them. These are qualities and investments which are irreplaceable.

In generations past, when wars were frequent and infant mortality was high, large families were common. Last century, and even after the Second World War, having four or six kids was not unusual. Through the sixties and seventies the bar was lowered, to three, and then to the rather odd modern standard of 2.4.

Once upon a time, we had things like Family Benefits in this country, and we did put milk into our babies, dished out free at school every day. What happened?

I say this, to my generation and to the one immediately behind me; if you haven’t done so already, get shackled, get settled, and then get down and breed.

New Zealand needs your babies more than ever before.

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 13

Mark Steyn

steynpost

In order to keep a handful of mills open, would you want your Yorkshire town to adopt Mirpuri practices of cousin marriage and a rate of congenital birth defects to match?

14 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

The death of multiculti

A

t the New York Conservative Party conference in Albany the other week, I was asked about the party’s role in state politics. I replied that in a multiparty system it’s very important to have some sort of force to the right of the right-of-centre party – to arrest the tendency of the “mainstream” right to drift across the spectrum and wind up taking the rest of us to the same destination as the lefties want to go but at a slightly slower speed.

A useful illustration of that role can be seen in Europe’s current debate. Asked on TV about David Cameron’s recent attack on “multiculturalism”, I said flippantly that it was heartening to hear the Prime Minister sounding like a six-year-old Steyn column.1 Of course, he didn’t go quite that far. But, because I and Melanie Phillips and Henryk Broder and Thilo Sarrazin and Geert Wilders and a relatively small number of «extremists» did go so far, it›s become possible for a lot of folks in the mushy middle to meet us halfway. Hence, the bizarre new phenomenon of European heads of governments stampeding to denounce multiculturalism: If it›s Tuesday, it must be Angela Merkel. That multiculturalism is a failure is the new conventional wisdom, the centrist position.

This in itself is certainly remarkable. One of the oddest moments in my long battle with Canada›s «human rights» shakedown racket came after my TV encounter with the Canadian Islamic Congress› three sock puppets. After the show, I mentioned to Naseem, the least disagreeable of the socks, that I›d heard her say on NPR that it was improper for me to attack «multiculturalism» because

multiculturalism was officially embedded in Canada›s constitution. And I said: So what?

A free society shouldn›t have an official ideology, but, if it has, I certainly reserve the right to object to it – as I would have objected to Italy›s official ideology if I›d chanced to live under it 80 years ago. And Naseem looked at me as if I was nuts, and explained, somewhat pityingly, that I didn›t understand that being Canadian means supporting multiculturalism.

Millions and millions of Canadians and Britons and Australians and Germans and French and Dutch and Swiss take the same position: A concept that barely existed two generations back is now regarded as a defining attribute – the defining attribute – of some of the oldest nation states on the planet. What can’t be sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism? British public buildings should cease to fly the national flag because it no longer “reflects our multicultural society”.

Canada should ditch the monarchy because it no longer “reflects our multicultural society”. Belgian cops should eschew doughnut consumption during Ramadan because their dietary practices no longer “reflect our multicultural society”. You’d almost think this “multicultural society” was some sort of organic societal evolution, as opposed to a racket consciously imposed on the nation by its ruling elite. Initially, mass immigration was justified on economic grounds – we need immigrants to come to the west and work in the mills. But the mills closed anyway, and now there are mosques and madrassahs, and gender-segregated swimming sessions at municipal pools and Islam-compliant nurses’

uniforms in state hospitals, and reoriented non-Mecca-facing toilets in prison. “Multiculturalism” was invented as a cover for the failure of the economic rationale: okay, mass immigration won’t make us richer, but it does make us better.

The central argument of America Alone is that culture trumps economics: Even assuming there was a modest economic benefit to mass immigration, would you be willing to lose your country for it? In order to keep a handful of mills open, would you want your Yorkshire town to adopt Mirpuri practices of cousin marriage and a rate of congenital birth defects to match? Had the political class put it like that in the Sixties, there’s no doubt what the answer would have been.

So now the same political class is telling us that multiculturalism is a failure – “a wrongheaded doctrine that has had disastrous results,” as David Cameron put it, leading immigrant communities “to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream.” The Prime Minister said the cure for multiculturalism is “muscular liberalism”, which sounds pretty butch for a 21st century Brit pol. But, as the speech went on, the muscle turned to flab before your very eyes: Don’t worry, there’s no problem with Islam – “a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people” - only with “Islamist extremism”, and while the problem with “Islamist extremism” can manifest itself in unfortunate ways – “the biggest threat that we face is terrorist attacks” – it is “important to stress that terrorism is not linked to any one religion or ethnic group”.

If you were one of those lavishly-funded Muslim lobby groups that dreams of seeing the Islamic crescent flying over Buckingham Palace, you’d be forgiven for thinking that, for all the muscle, it’s just PC bollocks as usual. The “biggest threat” is not that al-Qa’ida will blow up the Tower of London or the Pompidou Centre, but that in the nullity of the modern multicultural state, through simple demographic arithmetic and a thousand trivial, incremental concessions, the west will day by day Islamize2 – remorselessly3 and disastrously4.

What do Cameron and Merkel and Sarkozy intend to do about that? Give another speech denouncing multiculturalism two years from now? Until the Sixties, it was taken for granted that a sovereign state had the right to pick and choose to which foreigners, if any, it extended the right of residency. Fifty years later, “multiculturalism” has so distorted the language that even to suggest a Slovene might be more easily assimilated than a Somali puts one beyond the pale. All that survives of those assumptions is the question I had to answer on my US immigration form about whether I had been a member of Germany’s National Socialist Party between the years 1933 and 1945.

Suppose I had been. Long time ago. Might have changed my views on a lot of things since then. Yet the Government of the United States still reserves the right to draw certain conclusions about one’s suitability based on ideological enthusiasms.

Why should America and Canada and Britain and Europe not apply that principle more broadly? If certain communities have a 40-year track record of ever more intense self-segregation,

why can that not be taken into account in their immigration applications?

Instead, Cameron’s answer to the failure of multiculturalism is that “we” need to work harder “to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong”. But what if that’s too much hard work?

So much hard work that it is, in fact, never going to happen? Wouldn’t it just be easier to cut back on mass immigration at a time of ever higher levels of unemployment and welfare dependency? Or even cut back on mass immigration from, ahem, certain parts of the world?

Whoa. If any such thoughts crossed Cameron’s mind, Sir Humphrey’s blue pencil took care of them. For hardcore leftists, “multiculturalism” was a polite cover for social engineering.

For the somnolent brain-dead of the mushier liberals, it was one of those fluffy pain-free words it was easy to be in favour of.

So it’s quite an achievement to have shifted the multiculti word off the pink-bunny side of the ledger. Nevertheless, the real question is what, if anything, follows therefrom.

[UPDATE: Scaramouche5 and Kathy Shaidle have more.

Kathy reprises her celebrated line: “Halt Muslim immigration to the west.” It’s worth adding that, even if governments did this starting at midnight, the differences in birthrates among those already present would mean that within two generations Muslims in major European countries would still represent between a fifth and half of the general population and overwhelmingly dominate the major cities. In other words, in terms of social tranquility, the best case scenario is somewhere between Ulster in the Seventies and Bosnia in the Nineties – and the worse ones are something closer to Tahrir Square filled with the “freedom-loving” “democrats” who sexually assaulted a CBS reporter while shouting “Jew! Jew!”6 Nonetheless, getting a grip on mass immigration would at least signal to existing foreign residents that the west has ceased to fetishize civilizational suicide as moral narcissism. For Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron to give speeches arguing that their societies have failed to turn immigrants into citizens to a degree that threatens social cohesion while simultaneously leaving the doors wide open suggests a certain lack of seriousness.]

References 1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3618488/ A-victory-for-multiculti-over-common-sense.html 2. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/165343.html 3. http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/02/05/muslim-families-inwinnipeg-want-children-excused-from-certain-classes/ 4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356361/ShameBritains-Muslim-schools-Secret-filming-shows-pupils-beaten. html 5. http://scaramouchee.blogspot.com/2011/02/encouragingwords-but-actions-speak.html 6. http://www.punditandpundette.com/2011/02/cairo-mobcelebrates-freedom-by-raping.html

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16 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

HIS/interview

The ST POWER of 1

WINSTON PETERS PITCHES FOR A JIMINY CRICKET ROLE IN THE NEXT PARLIAMENT

QUESTIONS BY IAN WISHART ANSWERS BY WINSTON PETERS Q: How are the preparations for the election going?

Winston: On election night 2008 we decided that we were going to carry on and never accept that as our fate and destiny, and the people have remained loyal, worked hard. We’re in a very significant position now as a platform for the next six months.

Q: That election night, did you sit down with a whiskey or whatever afterwards and think to yourself, never again?

Winston: No I didn’t. I decided I would get up, thank my supporters, I would never give my opponents any chance to know how I really felt and I would accept our result the way one has to. You’ve got to significantly take the blame yourself because no matter what is against you, you’ve got to be good enough to triumph over it and we just didn’t quite make it.

Q: Did you have a feeling about how it was going to go on election night or did it take you by surprise?

Winston: I believed that we would get over 5% and that would be enough to decide the election as we did in 2005. We’d been through the most vicious campaign in this country’s history over five months of three totally baseless investigations conducted by the police, the Serious Fraud Office and the Electoral Commission, all of which found nothing but no one ever thought about that. The police clearance only came two weeks from the election. As for the Privileges committee – everyone understands a kangaroo court and it was disgrace frankly, but I’ve made that clear. We thought nevertheless that we’d make it home. The thing that tipped it in my view was the totally false polls that were coming out saying that it would be a wasted vote for NZ First which were on one percent according to these polls – which is still happening on TV3 and TV1 – that a vote for NZ First is a wasted vote. Otherwise we’d have gotten over the top easily.

As it was they were 450% wrong with their final result. We got 4.7%. They said we were going to get one. They were that far out but they will never apologise, never

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 17

change their strategy, and this time I’m warning all my supporters and our team just to ignore those sorts of baseless polls.

We’ve got significant polls which tell us we’re doing well and we’ll carry on and put the hard yards in.

Q: In terms of the flow on effect of 2008 election night, it must have been incredibly difficult to tell your supporters the next day: this is how it is. What were they saying to you?

Winston: The wonderful thing was that the people I expected to stay with the concepts and beliefs and principles of NZ First stuck with them and that’s what mattered. They were all for going on, so was I, and we set our mind to slowly, outside of the radar screen, rebuild the party after our severe defeat and to take us back to what we’ve always been, a number three party in this country.

18 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

Q: Do you think that any of the Helen Clark brand tarnished you guys in terms of being too closely associated after nine years of Labour with the backwash from that?

Winston: You always take a risk when you’re with a party that’s in its third term, that you get some carryover. But that’s the nature and character of politics, you can’t avoid that. Particularly in an environment where so few in the media have been prepared to support MMP as the changed electoral system of this country. So if you’ve got that, you’ve got this obsession with writing the script as though it’s first past the post, and it’s not.

Q: I guess there’s the range of views, I mean, I look at the New Zealand situation and I think you look at a spectrum that slides between the Greens at one end or Act at the other, and the influence

that they could bring to bear – or even the Maori party – by holding the balance of power. What would you tweak about MMP to deal with that?

Winston: Well not the threshold.

Despite us getting 4.7% and losing, I still argue for 5%. I did at the time, I still do because it eliminates the lunatic fringe as much as possible. There’s always been a lunatic fringe in parliament, even under first past the post. We don’t need more than a hundred MPs, I’d go with the Robertson petition, I always have, except I believe we’d only need 80 given that we’ve sold so many state assets and so many positions of authority have been eliminated by the fact that the assets the minister and the group were supposed to be looking after is gone from this country.

Q: If we don’t significantly tweak MMP,

is there room then or a necessity even for perhaps some sort of constitutional reform, I mean Amy Brooke’s been talking about the Swiss model of the hundred day referendum if legislation is passed that the public disagree with. Is there room for some sort of constitutional control on government legislation?

Winston: I’ve always believed in a citizen’s initiated referenda, but I also believe that wise governments would use referenda themselves, to initiate it themselves at election time. There’s no greater cost to having it at election time but for that to happen there’s got to be a significant mind change in parliament. There are some strictures around that, I wrote a speech about it seven or eight years ago and I still stand by that speech, that we will not be like Switzerland and there are a number of reasons for it. I’ll give you one: Switzerland wouldn’t confront Hitler, but the rest of us had to. You know, if the system throws up that result then I don’t think it’s the ideal system. But I am a strong believer in referenda, citizen’s initiated and government initiated, to better determine the public’s view on things.

Q: I agree with you on the Hitler example. But I wonder if that isn’t an example of democracy at work and the reality is you have to live with your choices. I mean, Switzerland, if the war had gone the other way would have been overrun and the people would have had to live with that.

Winston: Well yes but we had to shed blood so they didn’t have to live with it.

There’s something acutely unfair and historically wrong about that.

Q: In terms of the things that have been thrown at you, I mean, the SFO, the police enquiry and so forth, do you think there was any political aspect to their length of time it took them to investigate and clear or was it just routine?

Winston: There was no doubt about it, the SFO had a malignant attitude towards NZ First. We after all had, well I had, gotten rid of one of its former directors, Chas Sturt, over the Winebox when he was blown out of the water in the enquiry. We’d also called for the abolition of the Serious Fraud Office and that was coming. The government had decided that we were right. So they had every reason to try and do us, they went

There was no doubt about it, the SFO had a malignant attitude towards NZ First. We after all had, well I had, gotten rid of one of its former directors, Chas Sturt, over the Winebox when he was blown out of the water in the enquiry into three months detail and miniscule investigation to try and get us, and had nothing.

What was being investigated was the party funding, which I might tell you was a tissue of lies, and I tell you for this reason: we moved to get rid of trusts running party support, but we were voted down in parliament. Now I’ve been told by members of the media: ‘well how come you’ve got a trust fund?’ And the answer is, well, if I go for a taxation at 55% and I get voted down and the taxation’s 30, are you suggesting I should voluntarily pay 55% after that? That’s how unfair it was and base it was, but here’s the difference.

We got members of parliament in for $16,000 a member. Other parties, and Act was the worst, were paying $149,000 a member. Who’s getting financial backing here? Not us. And it showed.

Q: In terms of the choice of financial backer, the Owen Glenn affair, I mean, he’d already come to prominence with Labour and caused them some grief, when those first bombshells went off 1 did that cause you any concern when he was being exposed regarding Labour and did that give you any worries about what might come out?

Winston: Well I didn’t understand and I still don’t that he was being exposed by Labour, I understood he’d gone public and said “I’m supporting Labour.”

And he’d said that publicly. But in our case, when the telephone accounts were pulled out, the one compelling series of telephone records demonstrated that he called us, not us him, and Brian Henry in particular, my lawyer, where the matter remained.

Here comes the point, I’m running an electoral petition on the basis that this electorate has not had a fair election. You don’t self-enrich yourself when you do that, you only pay money yourself to do

it, so we’ve all been paying money. And under a trust arrangement with the lawyer, this very same one, that Nick Smith had, but Nick Smith’s one was different.

His was about his own personal wealth, because he was being sued. He had a fund, and he claimed to parliament that he had checked the matter with the parliamentary commissioner. Margaret Bazley wrote to me to say, “that is not true, no check was ever made at my office”. Nothing happened. So one fellow is put in front of the Privileges committee and one guy is not, headed by and run by the National party. They can’t find a ruling against me, so they make a ruling up and then they apply it against me retrospectively. That’s why I told them to go to Hell.

And that’s the thing, that’s life sometimes and, you know, sadly sometimes in these circumstances, the truth gets lost.

But I have the evidence on that and I’m not worried about it anyway of course, here comes the point, we rebuilt this party, we have been packing halls around the country, the old fashioned way, we’re not scared to have public meetings and that’s starting to tell. And this last week of meteoric rise and fall of certain personalities is a temporary thing. Things will stabilise when they come towards the end of the year.

Q: In terms of, I guess, moving forward for NZ First, you guys have had a fair run of coalitions with various governments Winston: Only one. We were in coalition with National, we had a confidence and supply agreement with, but weren’t in coalition with, Labour.

Q: Yeah. But in sense of, I guess, you’re right, but in the sense of the public perspective you were aligned in the public eye because of the confidence and supply agreement. Do you think it was delineated enough or did you lose your brand in there?

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 19

Winston: No we didn’t lose our brand, here’s the real point. I mean, if you go to the April polls up to May, the May polls of 2008, NZ First was on the rise. It’s happened to us twice you know. In 2005, the party hit 12% in the polls, in May of 2005, which was the same week that the Herald launched a front page allegation that we were in secret talks with National. Totally baseless, never even gave one shred of evidence, but they ran it front page, left hand side, as the number one heading. That was designed to tip NZ First over and it almost did. One point, there’s only one party not in negotiations with any other party in this country and it’s NZ First.

Q: Coming back to Owen Glenn, did he make the first approach to you guys out of the blue?

Winston: Yeah he did. And that’s the point. When it came to the phone records, that’s what it proved. Unfortunately at the later part of that contact with Owen Glenn, those phone records were not nearly as accurate as they could have been. The problem is that my lawyer was moving houses at the time and we were in a real bind trying to nail that down because of two things: a) he’d moved house and into a temporary accommodation into a third house over a period of time of three or four weeks.

And second, his mother was sick in Australia and he was seeing her, so he was doing it from abroad.

I had a real difficulty then trying to synchronise the investigation, and although we put an enormous amount of effort into the motels where he was staying on his legal business as a barrister, I just couldn’t put it together. When you’re not given any time to do it, that is, the moment the hearing started, those allegations were made, we had only hours to get ready for the next day, not weeks like you do in a court case. We were just being rail-roaded, but you know, that’s the way the system works.

Q: That’s why I asked the question. I mean, in your view, was there anything strange about the whole Owen Glenn affair that you’ve wondered about late at night and sort of thought, what really went on?

Winston: Yeah. Well, there is obviously, and you can only come to conclusions when you can get things to add

20 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

up. But I have this deep suspicion as to how this ever happened.

Q: In terms of NZ First, in this election, one of the things you’ve come out this time and said, pretty clearly, although I want to see just how definitive this is – this is an election that gives you the opportunity to sit on the cross benches and look at legislation on a case by case basis. Is that something that NZ First is now committed to – that you’re not going to go into coalition with anybody, that you’re just going to be an opposition party and sit and watch?

Winston: Well what we’ve said is we’re looking at all our options because we proved in 2002 to 2005, on Kiwibank, on Kiwisaver and on some fundamental issues, that Labour couldn’t get there without us, that we happened to agree with the policy on savings. And I do not think the Cullen fund went nearly far enough. But at least we’re a step in the right direction for a country that has neglected the savings option for decades.

And here we are now, in the total crap as a consequence. Now I ran a referenda, as you’ll recall, in 1997 as a treasurer. No one else ever gave them the choice but I thought I would. They voted me down, but they didn’t vote away the problem and now, you know, fourteen years later, this country is in a very, very parlous state, compared to Australia that went down that option.

Q: Yeah, well, I guess what I’m saying is, Hers magazine conducted a poll at the start of the year, over fourteen hundred readers and we took a subsample of that, randomly, and produced the poll, and what was fascinating about that poll is that 37% of those polled wanted NZ First back in parliament in some way, shape or form, 37%. I mean, you could govern with popularity support of that much in times gone by. Admittedly, 5.6% said they’d

vote for NZ First on the day, but clearly beyond the NZ First grass roots voters, you have a large segment of the population and a lot of National voters that feel the need for you to be in parliament, why do you think that is?

Winston [guffaws of laughter]: It’s because the system has to be kept accountable. And our record over many, many years on the BNZ, Maori loans affair, the Winebox affair, and a stack of other things, has been to expose what’s never been accountable often because of an inconvenience for a political party and their friends to actually own up to what’s going on, and we’ve had no fear or favour in that respect.

A large number of National people still remember the party they once joined, or they thought they belonged to. They have a terrible job reconciling what they’ve got now with say the Holyoake era, the Marshall era or even the Muldoon era – where the party sorts out with the referee above the ruck – whereas they see so much of their party captured now. That’s what I put it down to. They remember the party, the National party, the way I remember the party I once joined.

But I realised that by 1989, in opposi-

tion to Labour which was then in government, and I realised that we were having these secret meetings with the business round table, the front bench were, with one guy who wouldn’t turn up. And that’s me. I refused to go to any of those meetings because I could see what I believed to be the organised capture of a political party and at that point in time of course they had put two key guys in to write the party’s policy. And I remember one time Bolger, in a a fit of pique, said to me, ‘but they don’t buy policy,’ I said, ‘buy it?

They’re writing the damn stuff! They’re writing our industrial policy!’ I know that. I was a front bencher.

Q: In terms of, just again, to get this clear, is your NZ First position that you are going to the public this election to say ‘look, vote for us, we’ll keep them honest, we’ll stay on the side benches,’ or are you still holding out the possibility of coalition or supporting one of the major parties, in which case is that not a risky position to take?

Winston: Look, I know what some would recommend and say if they were in our circumstance, save for one thing: you have to face the fact that you might be sitting on election night where there’s no capacity because of your stance to form a government. Because you’ve ruled it out.

Now that, in my view is, constitutionally wrong, I think it’s politically wrong, and I think in terms of democracy it’s wrong. Because the people have just spent millions to hold an election to determine their government, and you’re saying ‘you can’t have one.’ Or you might be saying something worse: ‘we’re going to force you back to a new election with in a matter of months because you haven’t been able to decide.’ Either option I think is the consequence of making a decision beforehand.

But I’m saying that we’ll rule no option out including, if that is a NZ First choice for the MPs and the board and the party, going to the cross benches and keeping the system honest and accountable.

Q: What’s your preferred option?

Would you prefer to be in a confidence and supply or a coalition arrangement or would you prefer to be jousting from the sidelines and supporting on a case by case basis?

Winston: A party’s always got a preference, but the problem with the preference

is, it may not match the reality you’re facing. And the reality you’re facing, I’ll give you an example, it’s interesting, because Don Brash walks in post-election 2005 with Tariana Turia in tow and Rodney Hide, asking me to form a government with them. You see what I mean? Now I’m looking at a totally impossible circumstance, I’m looking at a party that is race based, that has got people who stand on the issue of race, racial preference – that’s the Maori party – and I’m being asked to form a government with them, and me and my party don’t believe in it, we believe in a single franchise. Because MMP promised that in time we would prove it and I believe that NZ First had proven more than any other party at the time that there was no need for a separate franchise. Crikey, I had eight members of parliament who were Maori in the one caucus of 17. We’d proven it.

So here I was being confronted with a giant leap back in history, to the past, by, of all people, Don Brash who you may have noticed now is on TV saying he doesn’t believe in the Maori seats. And there he is with the Maori party wanting me to form a government. And I said no.

This is an impossible option, it’s against our beliefs and principles, and we will not do it.

Q: But how much punishment a small party can take in the backwash of two big parties. And that’s why I keep asking, what’s your preference?

Winston: Well, yes, but all I’m saying to you is that if you’re given a set of circumstances post-election, knowing that there’s no government without you, what do you then do? That’s why if you’ve said it beforehand and ruled it out, I think you’ve short changed the public who may not have the expectation, but if they were being properly prepared by the media in particular and commentators as well, would know that expectation.

Q: Are you not worried that with the position that you’re taking for all the right intellectual reasons, doesn’t it leave a chink through which the media or the politicians or anyone else can drive a Mack truck and say ‘well, he hasn’t ruled it out so maybe he’s going to jump with National or maybe he’s going to jump with Labour’ and you end up with both sides demonising you?

Winston: Well that’s the risk you take.

But the fact is that we took a long time to come to that decision a long long time ago, and looked at it from every angle and in terms of the responsibility to the wider electorate post election, that’s the position we’ve come to and we’re not going to shift. My hope is, when those sorts of arguments are run, as they have been run

by Labour against us, and by National against us, people will see them for the lie they are. That’s my only hope. I still think there’s enough people in the public who understand that. And that’s the point.

Q: I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but if it’s that much of a knife edge and it just needs someone to take it over the limit and say we can spare the country an election, what would your preference be?

Winston: I’m jumping my colleagues on this but, I imagine their preference would be, because forming a government is the critical matter here, would be confidence and supply, in circumstances where you had to hold your nose the least tightest, whilst you did it.

Q: What do you think of John Key as a leader?

Winston: Well, of course I’m not there inside his caucus to know, but externally this country is in significant economic crisis and despite what the polls say, I believe that he has failed to take action in the critical areas and that he won’t take action because of his own financial and economic background, in one of our most critical areas of our economy.

We’ve got two things in trouble in this country. The abandonment of responsible capitalism on the one hand. And the lack of integrity for the welfare state on the other. Both are equally enormous threats to this country’s economic and social future, and neither of them have been explained properly.

Q: Can you perhaps explain for the readers a bit more about what you mean by that?

Winston: I’ll give you two examples.

We have enormous financial collapse in this country bred off the same greed that emerged in America and corruption in the market and the absolute fraud that was the derivatives industry. You have 39 franchises going down owing six billion dollars to mainly old people who

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 21

I believe that he has failed to take action in the critical areas and that he won’t take action because of his own financial and economic background, in one of our most critical areas of our economy

22 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

will never recover from that and there’s barely a guy in jail. Bernie Madoff’s been in prison in America for nearly, what, a year? And in this country, barely a person in prison.

You’ve got Huljich Investments is a classic. There’s a company that falsified the brochures and presentation to the public making investments in that Huljich Kiwisaver programme, and one of the guys that was heading the operation is a guy called Don Brash. What’s happened here? Another guy on the board was John Banks. What’s happened here?

We’ve got, now, people calling for a capital gains tax. Why, they say? Because people are obsessed with housing. Well why wouldn’t they be obsessed with housing, having been burnt year after year, decade after decade in the share industry?

You know, that’s all they’ve got to go on. People have said to me about the capital gains tax, and my response is, you fix the jungle up first, protecting investors instead of protecting directors, and you’ll correct it. But that will not happen. We’ve got New Zealanders awash with money, who won’t invest in their own country. Because they have got the experience of being victimised by a non responsive political system to significant corrupt financial institutions. It’s as clean as a whistle.

I’m looking at Australia right now and they’re doing a report on their banking system. That’s the political system in Australia doing a report on their banking system as to whether it’s rorting Australians, and these are Australian owned banks. These banks are operating in New Zealand. Just producing massive 60% profit, as one company posted the other day. This is the middle of the credit crunch and no one will have an investigation in this country. Now that’s what I mean on the capitalist side.

I’ll give you an example on the other side, the welfare state and where it has gone wrong. To have a child in this country, you have to have filled two requirements. You have to be 16 years of age, both of you, or older, and to have consented. Those are the only rules. Now to own two or more dogs in most city councils and boroughs in this country, there are sixteen rules you’ve got to

comply with. Including care, financial ability to look after the animal, feed it properly, shelter it properly, and all the things that are critical to a dog’s life. That shows just how far we’ve gone wrong.

When society used to have a welfare state that had integrity, it cost us far less than it costs us now. You can almost put a template on our welfare system, and that template you can shift it over to what’s going wrong in crime and domestic violence and everything else, and those templates will fit perfectly. So out go the benefits, here come the results, and we’re going nowhere. I want to see both fixed up, that’s one of the reasons why we’re staying in the game.

Q: How would you tackle the welfare dependency issue?

Winston: Well I’ve found a number one principle, the welfare state is there for the genuine deserving and needy, that’s your number one principle. And when you don’t see those two things, why are we paying welfare? There’s also a contract here. If I’m paying money to a parent to

look after a child, I want the child looked after. I want the deal kept. The old Labour party of 1935 and the National party of the 50’s would turn in their graves at what’s gone wrong. Back when it worked, contrary to what Hone Harawira and all these people say, there wasn’t one Maori unemployed. Not one. That’s how far we’ve lost the plot. That’s what’s required now, a clarity of understanding to fix it.

Both sides.

Q: Of course, cynics would say it did take six weeks to shift your household goods via NZ Rail from Christchurch to Dunedin and all that sort of thing because of the inefficiencies in the rail system but presumably we can move past those.

Winston [chuckles]: You know what it’s costing us now, not having a rail system? It’s costing a packet in roading while we have put these leviathans down the road trying to make up for something that Vogel actually dreamt up as being a great, critical component of this country’s development.

Q: Do you see Don Brash and John Banks as a threat to NZ First, I mean, you guys have some appeal to National voters, well obviously a resurgent Act does as well, what do you make of Brash and Banks?

Winston: I don’t think they’re a threat to us at all. I think they’re a threat to themselves and the National party. I’ll run through a few things. Take on the thing about the irresponsible capitalism I’m talking about, have we ever heard Don Brash say a thing about the banks?

Ever heard him say anything about the finance houses? Ever heard him say a thing about the need for savings? No. No, he can bang on about the Maori world because that’s what Crosby Textor told him to do way back in 2005. I was told by a National party key operative, ‘Winston, we’re trawling through your speeches and we’re going to grab most of it.’ [chuckles] So Don, he goes out and gives the Orewa speech, but how does that speech stand against the facts I’ve just given you, that he walks in with Tariana Turia, very happy to have Maori seats. See what I mean?

Q: What about Phil Goff as a leader, how do you rate him?

Winston: Look, I don’t want to be rating other leaders frankly, but I will tell you one thing, this guy has, despite his mannerly, courteous behaviour, has a serious media conspiracy against him now. And I’m looking from the outside here, looking at the headlines thinking, there’s something going on and I’ve seen it before.

My reaction would be to confront them head on. His is to be a gentleman.

And there’s no mileage in that. If you’ve got a deliberate conspiracy against you, manufacturing headlines of the type we’ve seen in past campaigns, designed to belittle someone, then I think you’ve got to respond. I saw it in 1993, Moore was the leader of the Labour party and Lange makes the speech about the need for progressive taxation. It’s all over the headlines. I happened to see Mike Moore and said to him, ‘look, you’ve got to hit back here.’ And he said to me ‘why?’ and I said ‘well, progressive taxation is the system we’ve got, he’s saying nothing, it’s been manufactured up as something huge as the difference between you and

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 23

We paid premiums for decades on the issue of risk, so why now have we got a government allowing the insurance companies to threaten to put up premiums everywhere? We paid for that risk in our premiums him. But it’s not’. Don’t forget how close that election was, but by the time Mike woke up he’d lost.

But who organised it? Well, funnily enough it was Granny Herald. The same people that organised that total lie in 2005 when we had polls – I was on 18% as preferred prime minister mid 2005 – and they launched a story saying I was in secret talks with National. Why? Anybody from any other angle in politics who was thinking of voting for me, was no longer going to if they thought I’d already signed away my future. So it’s pretty patently obvious. I know the people who were involved but you know, we’re setting our sights to ignore them and get on with what matters. We had a meeting in Levin the other day and they couldn’t get any more people in the hall and I realised that this media conspiracy won’t win this time.

Q: Now tell me about that because obviously in the last three years you’ve had your wilderness period, so how’s it rebuilt for you?

Winston: Yeah, we got 700 at North Shore late last year and yet not one reporter was there. But they are back.

That’s my point. I’ve given countless speeches, more public speeches than nearly every politician. I’m not talking about tied audiences, like Chambers of Commerce and what have you, but public speeches, but yet there’s barely a reporter there. That doesn’t worry me because frankly, it’s a whole range of things. It’s great for your party’s communication techniques, its systems of establishing its local branches, its organisation, and an interchange of views with the public. And also, it means we will be seriously match fit come campaign time cause we’ve had so many of these meetings.

Q: John Key, of course has ruled out working with NZ First, or with NZ First

24 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

with Winston Peters as leader. On the strength of that are you prepared to say that even if the position presented itself, that you will not work with National, or are you keeping that door open and he may regret saying it?

Winston: I’ve been around long enough and watching politicians and watching him in particular of late, to know that what he says and does are two different things. He wasn’t going to put up taxes, you remember? Well GST’s 15%.

He wasn’t going to have asset sales, but now he’s going to have asset sales. He wasn’t going to interfere with the savings regime set up by Cullen, but he just has.

Just yesterday. So he’s probably got 20 things he’s broken his word on, so why would I rely on something he said about me and NZ First?

Q: The Christchurch crisis, the Pike River crisis, what’s your overall feeling on both of those things?

Winston: Were there systems for safety that were not complied with? That’s the fundamental issue, I mean, mining’s a difficult business, I used to work 11 miles underground, as a second class miner, so I’ve got some idea of what I’m talking about. But it’s a dangerous business and I don’t want to rush to judgement down there, other than I think that progress toward getting the bodies out has been slow, it seems to reside with people like the receivers, this cannot be. The Government made a commitment. Nothing to do with the receivers at the time – the Government made it. And I think those people need closure.

On Christchurch it’s two things.

Number one thing is, what will be the response of the insurance industry to rebuilding in any given place? Because you can’t get past that if you can’t get reinsurance. That is, new insurance for a new house. The second thing about the

Christchurch thing though, which I think is disastrous, is capitalism and commerce is about the issue of risk. We paid premiums for decades on the issue of risk, so why now have we got a government allowing the insurance companies to threaten to put up premiums everywhere?

We paid for that risk in our premiums. If they miscalculated, they have to wear it.

Because that’s the essence of capitalism.

That’s the essence of the free market, you don’t get a bonus for getting it wrong.

And they’re about to.

What’s John Key going to do about that? Absolutely nothing. And every New Zealand homeowner is going to be paying extra because of the government’s failure to act in the defence of its own people. Now they say, “well hang on, what the insurance companies say is ‘we won’t front up’,” and the answer is ‘well you won’t be doing any insurance in this country at all. This market will be lost to you if that is your attitude. And there’ll be enough insurance companies to say ‘hang on, we’re going to get all the benefits here, we’ll stay and play the game.’

But Key won’t do that.

Q: What are the key issues for this election for NZ First, what are the points that you want to make to people?

Winston: Well, I know it might sound boring but the economy is the key issue for this election, and the fundamentals of so much of which are so wrong, there are many examples I could give you but here’s one: We’ve had record commodity prices, and for the last eight months in particular there’s been record upon record upon record. All of which have been eaten up by a totally overinflated dollar. So all of those things have been lost to the export community, and at the very same time as this is happening, with dairy prices at a record, products at a record international price, we’ve got hundreds of dairy farms in trouble. How could this possibly be?

Alongside that, we’ve got milk costing more than coke. It’s not Fonterra’s fault, it isn’t the farmers’ fault, but it sure is at one end of the market, the retail end of the market, their fault. Nothing’s been done about it. There’s a whole stack of things. Telecommunications has seen 21 years of price gouging of the New Zealand customer, an announcement was made

yesterday by Steven Joyce and yet none of that found any way to lower pricing for the consumer. And they’re already saying so.

So the 21 years for the system to respond tells me how wrong and bad parts of our political system are. And then alongside that as we speak, the dollar and the price of oil going up and down, right now, New Zealanders are paying between 47 and 50 cents more than Australia for their fuel.

Why? I mean, it’s a key component of this country’s operations. Why are we paying 47 and 50 cents more in real terms, 50 cents more than Australians. That should be a matter of government investigation, surely.

Q: Especially when Aussies earn 30% more than us.

Winston: Well, see, here’s a classic: You’ve got a prime minister who says that he believes that we should head out to catch Australia by 2025. The man in charge of economy is telling Australian businesses ‘Look, we’re located in New Zealand, our wages are so much cheaper.’

Now there’s an unspoken statement there: ‘and they will be forever.’ Otherwise why relocate if the position is going to be changed next year?

So they’ve given up. And to say, ‘well I’m aspirational, I’m optimistic.’ Well wonderful, but out there in New Zealand there’s a fair bit of despair. We’ve got to convert that into hope.

Q: So, in terms of election, who do you think is going to be the main party that comes out of this one?

Winston: Well first of all, come back to these polls. TV1 and TV3 polls are just rubbish. You go and talk to a thousand people, ok? 250 say, ‘I won’t tell you.’ So they take them out of their system, out of the equation, round it up to 100% and give you the results. That’s why, I’ll tell you now, 2008, NZ First result against the poll was almost 475% out. 475. 2005, over 500% out. 2002, they told the public we were getting 1%, four weeks later we got 10.8. Now this is a damn disgrace.

Q: What you’re really saying is when media and polling companies remove the ‘don’t knows’ from a sample in election year, they’re skewing the figures.

Winston: They’re totally skewing the figures, and those polls that drill on and drill on to try and eliminate down to some sort of analytical, scientific answer, are doing justice by the electorate. The second

evidence is, where in the democratic world do you get pollsters with a spread of 14%?

Australia, Canada, USA, United States, they’d be spreading at three to two and a half percent maximum, if they go beyond that they all have a meeting to say, ‘what’s wrong with our methodology?’ But not in New Zealand. Just carry on as though we’re a banana republic.

Q: Is there a poll that you regard as more credible than the others?

Winston: Horizon, I do because they do extrapolate their ‘don’t knows’ down to about 8%. And that one puts us on 7.4%. It’s had us above five for a long time.

And we haven’t really started yet. So we’ve got a lot of confidence in that. It’s also, the Horizon poll, borne out by the internal polls of Labour and National.

That’s the key part I want to tell you, and National full well knows it. That’s why John Key was prepared to do a deal with Rodney Hide in Epsom in 2008. If they believed in TV1 and TV3 polls why would they have bothered to do a deal with Rodney Hide in Epsom? They do it because they know; their internal polling is not what TV1 and TV3’s polls are telling them.

Q: Obviously with Act and Rodney Hide going from Epsom, they’re looking at putting John Banks in as the candidate. That’s going to be interesting isn’t it?

Winston: Well, first of all, my question to you is this: Huljich Investments, what’s happening there? Why is the man that advanced money to the company facing court charges? And the people that sat there in the boardroom looking at the books with the advance in it not facing court charges? How can this be? You saw Fortex? That was a loan declared as income. Down goes the director. You saw Waipareira Trust. A home that wasn’t sold, was declared as income on the books.

That was ajudged

to be fraudulent. Go to Hujlich. What’s the difference here? And how can this man, Brash, be sitting there, who’s meant to be this economic genius, who was the critical man on the board in my view, not have seen it?

Q: Is there anything else you are hoping I don’t ask you about?

Winston [laughs]: I was thinking when you called me, of that interview you had with John Tamihere where he talked about – what was it – ‘frontbums and tossers’. I thought, well I will not be getting caught out like that!

References 1. Investigate, Feb 2006, http:// issuu.com/iwishart/docs/ invnzfeb06_sec2?viewMode=magazine

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 25

PIKE THE INSIDE

STORY THE PUSH TO GO BACK IN WORDS BY IAN WISHART PHOTOGRAPHY BY XINHUA/NZPA

26 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 27

Y

ou can hear the strain in West Coast mayor Tony Kokshoorn’s voice. It’s been a hell of a week for the families of the 29 dead Pike miners, after news of not one, but two bodies filmed inside the mine.

In January and February Investigate HIS/HERS published special investigations suggesting the miners could have survived the initial blast at Pike, and arguing rescue teams should have gone in immediately after the first one.

Now, that’s looking increasingly as if an opportunity was missed.

“I actually was the public face of this mine for 10 years,” laments Kokshoorn. “I lobbied hard to get it, because we had issues with DOC and ministerial stuff. So I really pushed that mine and it was a hell of a shock when it blew.”

To find out, then, that the miners may have survived only to die for a lack of rescue, has turned grief back into shock.

“We’re in a kind of a no-man’s land. The anxiety levels have gone through the roof for those families.

Because the rumour that was always around – that there could be bodies intact – has proven correct.

“Howard Broad came down and said ‘that’s it, we’re getting out and closing the operation down as police’. Now they sold us the story that everyone was incinerated, and we basically accepted that. But then it started to emerge that different areas of the mine might have been affected differently.”

When news that a body may have been found initially broke, police said it was a hard to read image that initially they did not think was human. Even when they told families this month, they put it in very vague terms.

“They put it out to us at the time, they said it was like a scan of a body, they put it altogether with a scan,” says Kokshoorn.

“But when I went up and talked to the receivers, and talked to Doug White, I spent several hours with them, went up to the mine – the first thing that became clear to me was they told me they had good film of the body – not a scan – actual good film.

“It was a body in the recovery position, with the face down, but entirely intact, clothing and everything. When I asked them the reason for that, they said obviously he was away from the explosion – he was maybe halfway down the main mine. The mine is in two parts, you have a 2.3km tunnel in solid rock, and then you get to the mine proper, in coal, which goes for another three quarters of a kilometre.

“That was down another 400 metres into the mine, on one of the faces. That particular part of the mine, the temperatures in that area are only seven degrees. Another part is only 12 degrees. The hottest part of the mine at the moment is only 20 degrees anyway. So it’s cooled down. But there’s only a three percent oxygen level now, which means the bodies are being preserved.

“It’s really heightened the desire to get a recovery team down inside there.”

The problem, though, is the receivers. Their brief is to sell

28 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

off the mine to the highest bidder and recover money for the secured creditors, the BNZ and NZ Oil and Gas. Recovering bodies isn’t part of their brief. Kokshoorn says around a dozen companies have expressed an interest in buying the mine, but the one he’s hoping for is Solid Energy.

“I pushed them to raise their hand, because they are the only ones so far who have said they will give their best shot to recovering those bodies, and at the same time they will pay the $5 million owing to local unsecured creditors. That’s good business from their point of view.”

But Kokshoorn’s plan could still founder unless Prime Minister John Key steps in. Left to the freemarket, with no requirement to recover the bodies, the highest bidder might opt to open up Pike by a different route and never bring out the 29.

Kokshoorn says the Government has the power – as controller of the mine licence that a buyer would get – to make it a requirement of sale that the bodies are brought out.

“It makes sense for a New Zealand owned company to take this over,” says Kokshoorn. “The government should have some influence here. It’s a win win.”

But as the mayor thrashes out a recovery plan, there are also new details emerging of precisely what went on just after the initial explosion. Kokshoorn says the power cut was the first inkling that mine manager Doug White had of a problem.

He drove up to the mine, picked up some wreckage that had been blown out the entrance – apparently without realising its significance – then drove back down to his office and told the electrician to go and check inside.

“The offices and the actual mine portal are separated by about three quarters of a kilometre,” explains Kokshoorn. When the electrician saw Russell Smith – unconscious but seemingly dead

on the ground – “he tells Doug White at this point, ‘hey, there’s been a disaster’. At around the same time Rockhouse and Russell Smith have managed to phone through and confirmed there’s been a big explosion, and they are coming out.

“I said to Doug, ‘What bugs me is, why weren’t you there at the mouth when they came out? Also why didn’t you go down to help them out but why weren’t you there at the portal with your rescue crews, when these two came out?’ I’m sorry, I find it that incredible. You should be halfway down that tunnel bringing those two survivors out.”

K

okshoorn says there was also poor communication between police and the mine during the rescue. “From an explosion point of view, all we know is they wouldn’t go in because it was too risky. We went through to the fifth day before we had that second explosion. But they reckon the fourth explosion was actually the biggest.

“Now at this point they were telling everybody it’s an inferno and they’ve all been incinerated, and we naturally believed that, but it seems now that there’s been a major rockfall in there around Spaghetti Junction.”

It’s possible that the rockfall, which may have happened in the first blast, could have sealed survivors off from the burning coal, only to leave them dying of suffocation when no help arrived. Video footage clearly shows undamaged paper and wood deep inside the mine, meaning temperatures never got hot enough there despite the fiery images on TV. “As it sits at the moment,” says the mayor, “you can go into the mine right now, because the mine is totally inert – no problem whatsoever – because the oxygen levels are only 2-3%. The mine can’t explode.”

But authorities are still refusing to allow professional volunteers to go in and check. “They claim it will introduce oxygen,” says Kokshoorn. “The problem is, there are some risks you have to take, but you measure the risk.”

The example of men risking life and limb to save trapped Christchurch residents from the constant threat of tottering buildings and aftershocks comes to mind. But that was a rescue initially driven by construction workers, not police.

“What about 9/11?” agrees Kokshoorn. “Those firemen ran in there knowing – because they’ve signed up to be firemen – that there’s a certain amount of risk. That’s why they are respected and get medals too – because they take those risks.

“The risk level rises in a coal mine by the day, as we found out. Every coal mine disaster in history, miners have gone in straight away and they’ve always brought the men out and come out themselves. But after 12 or 24 hours the opportunity diminishes because the methane levels start to rise again.”

For the first time, Kokshoorn reveals some of New Zealand’s top mine rescue officials have resigned from the mines rescue organisation because of the way Pike River was handled.

“It’s a sad state of affairs, and that’s why some of our search and rescue personnel resigned, because they knew they’d lost that window of opportunity. We’ve had search and rescue personnel resign. The frustration levels had many of them threatening to resign. They wanted to go down that mine.

“I got up that mine within an hour or so of police telling me.

I stayed there the entire night except for two occasions when I came down to Greymouth to address the families. But I walked past assembled search and rescue workers, and two of them said to me ‘Tony, we want to go down that mine right now, we don’t give a damn about the gas, but they won’t let us’.

The only thing I can tell you when I got up there it was like a lockdown. When I queried Doug White about it the other day, he said they were very short on personnel. It was a Friday afternoon and most people had cleared out, and he said ‘we had to try and assemble a group to help’.”

One of the first things Kokshoorn asked was whether the mine had notified the families. Another official told him they had, but the mayor says he was “sickened to the core” to discover many hours later that none of the families had been told anything by the mine at all.

The mayor says the mine staff appeared utterly disorganised.

“When I got back to the mine at 1am with a list of family cellphone numbers I had a huge row with Pike management, and it was only then that they admitted they hadn’t notified next of kin. I helped them do that right through to five in the morning. At five in the morning, they started ringing the families.

Some of the families still have not been formally notified by the company today.”

With the Pike River Commission of Inquiry beginning hearings in July, the story of who messed up the rescue won’t be going away in a hurry.

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 29

FISKING THE LISTENER AN EXPOSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE SCAREMONGERING

30 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

The Listener magazine celebrated James Hansen’s lecture tour of New Zealand with some climate fiction Hansen would be proud of. Shame it wasn’t true. Air Con author IAN WISHART skewers the Listener and Hansen with the latest science “The Land Of The Rising Sea”,

screamed the Listener’s cover story on May 14. “This is no longer about future generations, this is about today. Not only has it already begun, but it is bound to get worse, even if we do everything right. We have got to prepare.”

Sound the trumpets, assemble the small children and the infirm. Rally the Ponsonby/Grey Lynn mothers’ collectives – where are Robyn Malcolm and Lucy Lawless when you really, really need them?

Valid questions, but if you were looking for answers the Listener was the wrong magazine to find them in. The Listener, you see, typifies the Chicken-Little mentality of New Zealand’s mainstream media when it comes to global warming.

Journalists are so into the story they’ve actually come to believe it and suspended their checking skills.

So let’s measure some of Listener journalist Ruth Laugeson’s claims against the latest reality-checks. For the record, it’s worth noting Laugeson’s main sources were the compromised Royal Society of New Zealand1, and climate scientist Martin Manning from Victoria University.

RISING SEA LEVELS The Claim

“I don’t see how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could survive this century,” wails visiting Chook-in-Chief, NASA’s James Hansen, in the feature. It’s sitting on bedrock 400-500m below sea level, so the entire thing can get into the ocean. There’s about 6-7 metres of sea level [rise] in that ice sheet.”

But of course, in Hansen’s fantasy world, the West Antarctic Ice sheet is the least of the problems this century: “Sea level rise is one problem.

Carbon dioxide amounts of 400 ppm (parts per million), expected in 2016

with current emissions, will cause an eventual sea level rise of about 25 metres,” Hansen wrote in a newspaper article last year.2

The Reality If the Arctic and Antarctic were melting catastrophically, as the Listener claims when Laugeson writes “polar ice sheets are melting faster than expected”, you’d expect to see all that extra meltwater causing rising sea levels.

In reality, the latest satellite measurements show the rate of sea level increase – already small – has slowed down considerably in the past decade – the opposite of what Hansen and others are predicting.

In fact, there’s been no sea level increase since around 2006. Nor is sea level rise catastrophic in longer term records.

To back this up, a just-completed Australian study of Australian and NZ tide gauges has found no evidence of rapidly rising sea levels at all: “The Australasian region has four very long, continuous tide gauge records, at Fremantle (1897), Auckland (1903), Fort Denison (1914), and Newcastle (1925), which are invaluable for considering whether there is evidence that the rise in mean sea level is accelerating over the longer term at these locations in line with various global average sea level timeseries reconstructions,” wrote Australian scientist Phil Watson in a 2011 study published in the Journal of Coastal Research.3 “These long records have been converted to relative 20-year moving average water level time series and fitted to second-order polynomial functions to consider trends of acceleration in mean sea level over time. The analysis reveals a consistent trend of weak deceleration at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from 1940 to 2000. Short period trends of acceleration

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 31

Incidentally, this study found sea level rise in New Zealand decelerating as well. So if the last decade really was the hottest on record, there’s no evidence of it in sea level data in mean sea level after 1990 are evident at each site, although these are not abnormal or higher than other short-term rates measured throughout the historical record.”

So that’s the latest science on the issue

32 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

– no massive sea level rise over the past century at all.

Yet despite real studies of actual tide records like these, mainstream media journalists continue to fall for the slick but untrue marketing hype being fed

them by people like Hansen. How else can we explain the Listener’s claim: “New scientific estimates for how much the sea will rise have roughly doubled in the past four years.”

Really?

Imagine what it would be like if Listener journalists actually researched stories independently, instead of relying on interviews with climate scientists. If they did, they might find more research, like this: “Without sea-level acceleration,” write US Army scientist James Houston and the University of Florida’s R G Dean in another study for the Journal of Coastal Research, “the 20th-century sea-level trend of 1.7 mm/y would produce a rise of only approximately 0.15 m from 2010 to 2100; therefore, sea-level acceleration is a critical component of projected sea-level rise.”

Take note of that. Sea levels rose an average of 17 centimetres over the past hundred years, so if they are going to rise by one to seven metres in the next ninety years there should be signs of an “acceleration” in sea levels rising. There must be such acceleration, because the Listener tells New Zealanders, “sea level rise may come faster than first thought”.

What does this next study tell us?

“To determine this acceleration, we analyze monthly-averaged records for 57 U.S. tide gauges in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base that have lengths of 60–156 years. Leastsquares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed.

“In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations.”

Decelerations? Not accelerations? More proof, if you need it, that the Listener article on catastrophic rising sea levels is a crock. To add insult to the Listener’s injury the US scientists double checked their findings against worldwide data, and again found “small sea-level decelerations similar to those we obtain from U.S. gauge records.”

Incidentally, this study found sea level rise in New Zealand decelerating as well.

So if the last decade really was the hottest on record, there’s no evidence of it in sea level data.

In a moment of unintended irony, Local Government NZ president and Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule is quoted by the Listener complaining that “Developers try to challenge some of the scientific information, or put up people to say that climate change isn’t happening”.

EXTREME WEATHER AS PROOF OF CLIMATE CHANGE The Claim

“Some 1200 Russians seeking to escape the heat drown at the beaches in June,” says the Listener. “Russian officials, who had been climate change sceptics, suddenly change tack.”

The Reality There’s an old adage, repeated constantly by global warming believers when it suits them, that “weather is not climate”.

What they mean is that people shouldn’t look at a cold day and assume that this disproves climate change. Yet global warming believers are inconsistent, and the Listener’s article is a classic example.

The implication is that global warming caused the Russian heatwave and caused the drowning because so many people went swimming.

But here’s what really happened, according to Reuters: “Dozens of Russians, unduly fond of their national tipple, are drowning daily as they stream to water to escape the record-setting scorching heat, a senior emergencies ministry official said on Wednesday.4 “Vodka-drinking groups — some with small children — can be seen at lakes and ponds in and around the Russian capital where the current three-week heatwave may set a new all-time record of 37 Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) this weekend.”

So there you have it, the Russian heatwave isn’t so much to blame as the Russian drinking habits, which have been a major cause of death through illness, accident and Darwin Awards style activities for decades in that country. The Listener also forgot to mention that the 1200 drowning deaths at the height of summer formed part of around 17,000 drowning deaths per annum in Russia – just another day at the office, in effect. Russia has the world’s highest drowning rate, nearly double its nearest competitor, and four times the drowning rate in New Zealand.

Not content with its glib coverage of the Russian heatwave, the Listener’s Ruth Laugeson waxed eloquently on Pakistan experiencing “its worst floods in 80 years”, again, implying climate change was the cause. But the first giveaway is the “in 80 years”. Eighty years ago a massive flood hit the country causing river levels to rise up to 26 metres. It was caused by a glacial lake breach, and it killed 408 people that we know of. The 2010 flood killed more than three times as many people.

Proof of climate change? The population of Pakistan was less than 30 million in 1929.

Today it is six times higher at 170 million.

Per capita, the 1929 floods were worse.

Incidentally, the catastrophic floods in Pakistan are a frequent and well-documented phenomenon: “Thirty-five destructive outburst floods have been recorded in the past 200 years,” reported one scientific study.5 “Thirty glaciers are known to have advanced across major headwater streams of the Indus and Yarkand Rivers. There is unambiguous evidence of large reservoirs ponded by eighteen of these glaciers. Meanwhile, a further thirty-seven glaciers interfere with the flow of trunk streams in a potentially dangerous way.”

So the floods are caused by the regular ebb and flow of glaciers, damming and un-damming rivers. Nothing to do with rising CO2 at all.

Still obsessed with floods as proof of climate change, the Listener then documents China’s floods last year which “killed more than 3000 people and forced the evacuation of 15 million,” according to Laugeson.

This, too, sounds impressive and ‘scary’, until it is placed into a little historical perspective. Flooding of the Yellow River in 1887 killed more than 900,000 Chinese. For the record, 1887 was a very cold year, not a hot one. Floods in North China in 1939 killed 500,000 people. Again, manmade CO2 had nothing to do with either event. The 2010 floods were a drop in the bucket in terms of China’s fairly regular serious floods.

By the time NASA’s James Hansen wraps up his New Zealand visit, undoubtedly you’ll have heard every climate scare story known to humankind, brought to you by gullible journalists who know little about the darker secrets of the climate

change lobby and even less about climate science itself. If you want an antidote, I can recommend a very good book…

References 1. http://briefingroom.typepad.com/ the_briefing_room/2009/11/nz-climatescientists-run-from-challengingquestions.html 2. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/ mailings/2010/20101122_ChinaOpEd.pdf 3. http://www.bioone.org/doi/ abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1 4. http://www.reuters.com/article/ idUSLDE66D0B3 5. http://itia.ntua.gr/hsj/redbooks/149/ iahs_149_0131.pdf

“I don’t see how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could survive this century,” wails visiting Chookin-Chief, NASA’s James Hansen

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 33

30 YEARS AFTER RED SQUAD: A REFLECTION

T

WORDS BY OWEN WINTER PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL ESTCOURT/NZHERALD

hirty years ago New Zealand endured with an event which changed the face of rugby and the nation – the 1981 Springbok Tour. When looking for people to talk of their experiences at this time many sources pointed toward a man who was once reviled as the face of police brutality and has since become a powerful businessman with no interest in rugby.

In another life, Ross Meurant was second in command of “The Red Squad” – the police enforcement group trained in riot control during the build up to the tour – an author and an ex-politician. From everything I had found on him, he appeared to be a formidable character to interview. He spoke with conviction when being quoted and didn’t appear to be universally liked.

Google helped me find contact details for the man.

On a rather non-descript business website his name was mentioned with an email address to use as a contact. Being unsure if I’d tracked down the right man, and hoping that he would take my request for an interview seriously, I sent a message.

A reply came in less than an hour – I had indeed found Ross Meurant, and he was happy to be interviewed. He gave instructions to find a copy of his book The Story of the Red Squad (Harlen Press, 1982), to read an article he had written in a Sunday newspaper (October 27, 2007), and to email 20 questions.

34 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

He suggested the library would have his book, but I was able to buy a copy through an online auction for $6. It was just a few days after the package arrived in the letterbox from Auckland.

Prior to reading the book – Meurant’s story of his experiences during the tour in his own words – I turned to Steve Braunias, who had written a profile on Meurant for the Sunday Star-Times newspaper, as inspiration. Braunias described him as “one of the most loathsome figures in modern New Zealand history”.

Braunias’ comment on trying to secure an interview generated apprehension: “I called him up for an interview. He rambled for a long time, and said, ‘No.’ He phoned back approximately 20 minutes later, rambled for a long time, and said, ‘Yes.’ “ Braunias’ story slowly unfolded to show the man had changed in the years since the tour, and he had mellowed from the hard-nosed cop in the turbulent 80s. So, apprehension recedes. A bit. Then it was time for the real research – to hear Meurant’s words from nearly 30 years ago.

The majority of a Saturday was spent absorbed in The Story of the Red Squad, including a trip to the coffee shop and a slight mishap with a tree I walked into (while reading), providing much amusement to the drivers around the Basin Reserve – and a good sign I had an engrossing book in hand.

The more I read his words the more anxious I became

HIS/profile

I’am astonished that an event during which no one was killed, manages to hold its place in the annals of NZ history with the profile it does

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 35

about coming up with 20 well-defined, original questions. He was obviously intelligent, worldly and outspoken. One Tuesday morning after sending the questions to him across the internet to Prague where he now lives, here was his reply.

And a surprise.

At the top of his answers he left a personal note: “I must say, this is a different level of questions than I usually receive – you may take that as a compliment.”

Which I did.

The intention of my feature was to look at how life had changed since 1981. Meurant says he feels the tour has no effect on his life now, except for the “bitter sweet dimensions” of the public profile he gained.

He says it’s ironic that the Red Squad book was the vehicle that led to his standing for a conservative National Party seat. “Even more ironical, I am not conservative!”

He’s right. Recounting his days as a National MP he says “I voted for gay rights, against hanging, abortion on demand [and] advocated legalisation of dope.”

The marijuana issue nearly saw him thrown out of the National party “so I compromised and said cannabis only – but in fact I think the evidence supports total decriminalization of all dope, but that is another story.”

The more I read his reply, the more

36 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

I realise although the tour itself may not have changed his life, the man has changed.

This was backed up when I contacted John Minto, who 30 years ago was the national organiser for HART (Halt All Racist Tours) which meant they were on very different sides at the time. In the Braunias article he mentions Meurant telling him he shook hands with Minto at a meeting the prior evening.

M

into recalls that handshake and said he was surprised by “how mellowed he had become,” and that “he was a very different person to the law-and-order cop from 1981”. They haven’t remained in contact, but Minto says it could be possible their paths will cross with the 30-year anniversary this year.

How does Meurant feel about the portrayal of police in documents, books and videos from the tour? His reply suggests anniversary reunions are not in his plans.

He is still “astonished that an event during which no one was killed, manages to hold its place in the annals of NZ history with the profile it does”.

In his 1982 book on his experience in the Red Squad, Meurant talks of the one sided media coverage during the tour, but he now admits if police had engaged in meaningful dialogue at the time it could

have been “ameliorated”.

The Google define tool tells me “ameliorated” means “to make better”.

He loosens his impressive knowledge of the English language when he reflects after 30 years on his experiences, describing the tour – and his duty as a police officer – as “a pain in the arse”.

“I was doing a final five papers for my BA at Auckland University, had a child and was keen not to leave home.”

The theme of the police force being human was a constant motif employed by Meurant, the writer. In the Red Squad book he shows us that the men with riot shields, helmets and batons weren’t ruthless creatures. They were men and women.

There are many references to the physical injuries police suffered – broken pelvises, collar bones and arms. While they were treated with medical assistance, Meurant agrees (by email) the psychological damage was overlooked, both by historians and the police at the time.

He says unit commander Phil Keber left the squad on medical grounds. His reason? He was no longer mentally capable of dealing with the violence.

A more disturbing picture of the mental state the officers were in was relayed in the story of the constable who has his name suppressed and who also left on medical grounds. He told Meurant through tears: “I hate Maori so much I want to kill them every time I get out of the car at a job.”

Meurant: “That, Owen, is evidence in my view of two very sick chaps.”

He wasn’t immune to tears himself.

There are references in his book to crying, and on July 25, 1981, in his police issued diary, he wrote two words: “Sad day.” Nothing more. It’s a rare moment, where we see the psychological side of the man who wanted the reader to know the police were human, not machines. I was intrigued by these diaries and what else they would contain; would these be published?

He responded: “Reproduce the actual diaries from which I wrote The Red

Squad Story? Never thought of that. Not broke enough to need to publish. Might bequeath the diaries along with the registration of the first political party under MMP (by me) and the documents between Bolger and me setting up the first every coalition government – to somewhere?”

T

he “sad day” the entry refers to is the now infamous rugby match and ensuing drama that took place in Hamilton. At 1.50pm, protesters swarmed down the street armed with wire cutters charging toward and cutting their way through a 2.5m wire-netting fence into the Rugby Park. Demonstrators made their way through the fence, on to a field and into a scene described by New Zealand Herald reporter D. J. Cameron, as “some obscene colosseum”.

The game was called off at 3.10 pm. “...

Two squadrons of police, batons swinging free, riot helmets glinting dully and so sinisterly Orwellian,” wrote Cameron.

On that day in Waikato the country was witness to both police and anti tour protesters being attacked. The crowd was baying for blood and calling for the police to “stop the bloody ballet. Use your batons”.

In the email, Meurant says in his view the Police Commissioner Bob Walton was constrained by both the way the police had historically behaved, and also his thoughts of keeping the role of commissioner over being a proactive commander. That day in Hamilton was chaos as a result, he said.

Walton and the Red Squad knew where the protest movements were going to break into the ground.

“Red Squad implored Walton to be allowed to meet the threat in the streets as they marched to the ground.

Walton refused and actually had Red Squad ‘locked’ in the dressing rooms beneath the grandstand. Only when he realised – too late – that the protestors had breached the environs, did he (probably in a fit of panic) release Red Squad.

“Had Red Squad met the mob in the streets, all the conditions of justification at law to prevent an imminent breach of the peace would have been present and Red Squad would have stopped that

movement in its tracks – as did Red Squad on every subsequent occasion we were let out of the cage.”

Meurant doesn’t believe South Africans understood the magnitude of the Hamilton fiasco on the NZ public psyche – both sides of the fence. “To this day, I don’t think the South Africans have any comprehension of the trouble their presence in NZ caused.

“They were simply astonished we (the police) had not beaten the s*** out of those who broke into the ground.

“Once the protestors sat down and were ‘peaceful’ the conditions at law for the police to weigh in with long batons, evaporated. It was too late. Game. Set. Match. And Muldoon decided that the game was lost by Walton’s timidity.”

Meurant recalls Walton had said, “if we had the entire police department of Hamilton I could not have prevented what happened”. Meurant told then National MP Jim McLay after the game this response was a “crock of s***”.

Three days later, Meurant received a phone call from the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, asking him to confirm what he told McLay. “A few days later in Palmerston North as a large protest group marched toward Red Squad in Cuba Street, Walton slid up beside me and said, ‘I don’t care what you do senior, but you stop them’. (And we did.) This initiative

by Walton suggested to me at the time he had been spoken to by Muldoon.”

During Meurant’s first term in Parliament in 1987, and a session over whiskey

in his lair, Muldoon retraced events and confirmed he had told Walton that “he either preserved the rule of law in the streets, or he was gone,” says Meurant.

He says the tour affected the way policing in New Zealand worked. The spy section of the police (CIS) were reporting back to the front line with information about the co-ordination, planning and “zealous leadership” of the anti-tour protestors and the police were being told it was significantly stronger than any previous demonstration including the Vietnam War. Meurant agrees the public perception of police in New Zealand has changed “but it has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary”. It would seem the man, Meurant, has evolved also, from the hard-nosed cop to a softer businessman making his fortune overseas away from the spotlight he was viewed in.

Perhaps the most telling piece from the nearly 2000-word reply I received in my email inbox was on the topic of re-writing his book now, from a different point of view, with 30 years passed.

“I put it to the publishers a couple of years back that Donna Awatere (a profile protest leader) and I reproduce the book with “reflections” from both sides. Then Donna ended up in jail and the publishers went off the idea. I might still go down this path.

“What would I write? Let’s wait and see – but the fact that Donna and I were able to agree in principle to do this, is perhaps a guide.” allaboutthestory.com

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 37

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38 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

HIS action /DRIVE 40 Moving Ford Damien O’Carroll helms the FPV-GS

/SPORT 42 Beating Oz Chris Forster looks at the Warriors and the Breakers

/INVEST 44 A Sucker Born...

Let me show you a trick, hand me your wallet, writes Peter Hensley

Beating aussie >> Can the Warriors match the Breakers and win the championship?

42

HIS/SPORT

drive

d r o F g n i v Mo ATES N I M S DO

V-G

P THE F

WORDS BY DAMIEN O’CARROLL

I

have to admit that I have a weakness for a nice V8. There is very little better in the automotive world than the belligerent bellow and sheer grunt that comes from a big eight.

And as such, I am personally very excited by the worldwide move towards smaller, more fuel-efficient engines.

Why? Because it means more petrol will be available for cars like the FPV GS. The GS is significant in the FPV line-up for a number of reasons. Firstly, it revives a nameplate that first appeared in 1969 and has gone on to become the second most collectable Ford Falcon after the mighty GT. But second reason is probably the more

40 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

interesting – for the first time in its history, FPV doesn't have a naturally-aspirated powerplant. The long-in-the-tooth 5.4-litre Boss V8 has finally been retired and an all-new engine, in the form of a supercharged version of the Mustang's Coyote 5.0-litre V8 now sits alongside the insanely good turbo-charged 4.0-litre inline six in FPV’s engine line-up.

Rather excitingly, it is also the most powerful motor in FPV’s history, with GT variants boasting a massive 335kW/570Nm output.

The GS has the same 5.0-litre supercharged V8 as the more powerful GTs, but with the wick turned down a little bit giving it a 315kW/545Nm, or the same power and slightly less torque than the old 5.4-litre GT. Visually, the GS differs from the GT range by lacking the black inserts under

the headlights, and with a different set of cheesy stickers being slathered over the sides and bonnet. Thankfully these can be optioned away, or failing that, a hair dryer and a sunny afternoon will soon do away with the visual atrocity that is the FPV sticker pack… That’s right, I am not a fan.

The other major difference comes in the form of the brakes – the GS lacks the GTs monster Brembo stoppers, relying instead on the standard kit from the Falcon XR8.

While externally there’s not a lot that differentiates the 2011 cars from last year’s model, from behind the steering wheel the changes are extremely obvious. Upon completing the stupidly over-complicated act of inserting the key and then pressing the starter button on the dash, the wonderfully aggressive-sounding V8 grumbles into life.

Nail it off the line and all hell breaks loose. The engine roars like a particularly

HIS/action angry bear that has just been jabbed in the genitals with a particularly sharp stick and a subdued, but noticeable supercharger whine joins proceedings.

The massive power tries it’s very best to tear the rear end of the car sideways, but the beautifully calibrated stability control system keeps things in check while still allowing enough playtime for a little bit of smoky sideways fun.

Where the old 5.4-litre was slightly lethargic down low, the supercharged 5.0-litre is anything but, with nearinstant throttle response. The old engine was also heavy and the new – and much lighter – 5.0-litre not only adds more power and quicker throttle response, it also improves handling by making the GS far less nose-heavy and nimbler as a result.

The GS isn’t perfect though and there are a few niggles. One criticism that can be almost universally applied to Fords is the fact that taller drivers, like myself, can’t drop the seat low enough.

The steering wheel controls for audio aren’t back-lit, making them difficult to use at night and, if you really climb up it, the fuel usage is prodigious to say the least. The last one is not exactly surprising though.

However the biggest criticism of the GS has to come in the form of steering wheel paddle shifters. Or rather, the fact that it doesn’t have any.

The six-speed automatic transmission is a beautiful piece of kit – with slick, smooth, well-timed shifts being a hallmark – and the manual mode is a delight.

But the ferocity and sheer frantic pace at which thing happen in the GS make the idea of lifting a hand off the steering wheel to grab the next gear, particularly when the massive power is doing its best to wrench the car sideways, is not the most appealing.

Still, the auto is more than good enough at shifting cogs itself to make this a minor niggle and if you were really that committed to the idea of shifting gears yourself, then you would probably buy the manual anyway. But the auto is still a far better transmission.

Upon completing the stupidly over-complicated act of inserting the key and then pressing the starter button on the dash, the wonderfully aggressive-sounding V8 grumbles into life So does the GS really miss the GTs extra 20kW and 25Nm? Not really. The GS is big, comfortable, well specced, startlingly quick, makes an incredible noise, handles better than something that big really has a right to, and best of all, at $73,990 comes in at $13,000 less

than a GT. And more importantly it undercuts the almost identically-powered (315kW/550Nm) entry level HSV Clubsport R8 by the same amount. And lands right in Commodore SS territory. And is a far, far better car than either of them.

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 41

sport

chris forster

The record books will show the Breakers pulled off an incredible turnaround against their fiercest rivals in Perth. American import Kevin Braswell sunk two huge 3-pointers in the dying minutes, and star player Kirk Penney ran riot

42 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

Breaking the drought The Breakers have broken the drought. They’ve also created the mould for other New Zealand franchises to match their history-making feat in Australian competitions. The Warriors could be next in line, if their mid-season form revival in the NRL is a sign of things to come.

B

asketball’s rarely had it so good.

The Breakers became a national sensation for 2 roller-coaster weeks in late April, propelling a non-mainstream sport into the psyche of Kiwis for the first time since the Tall Blacks surged into the semi-finals of the World Championships back in 2002.

But it almost turned to custard for the dominant team of the Australian NBL regular season. They suffered a horror defeat in their first semi-final against the Perth Wildcats, at their fortress of the North Shore Events Centre. No-one in the media gave them a dog’s show of levelling the ledger at the so-called Cage in Western Australia in Game Two of that playoff series.

TVNZ went for the jugular and delivered a scathing news item on the coaching abilities of Andrej Lemanis, and how he didn’t have the ability to steer the most talented squad in the Australian NBL to the Grand Final.

It was the classic Kiwi knocking machine in full swing, but the State TV hatchet piece had jumped the gun.

The record books will show the Breakers pulled off an incredible turnaround against their fiercest rivals in Perth. American import Kevin Braswell sunk two huge

3-pointers in the dying minutes, and star player Kirk Penney ran riot.

The New Zealand club finished-off the Wildcats on home turf to cap a memorable comeback, and after all of that the Cairns Taipans were a less venomous proposition in the Grand Final.

They took care of the business in Game One at the NSEC, were well below their best in losing a double-overtime thriller in North Queensland – then produced a defensive master class in front of their long suffering fans to clinch the title.

It was a case of destiny reached, and the likes of Kirk Penney, Kevin Braswell, Tom Abercrombie, Alex Pledger, Tim Wilkinson and Mike Vukona had become household names.

The New Zealand Breakers are funded

by Paul Blackwell who owns the Pak’n’Save supermarket chain, and there’s a strong Christian thread running through the club.

American-born point guard CJ Bruton, who’s been a star part of the Breakers set-up since crossing the Tasman in 2008, was certainly feeling the love as his team celebrated the end of an 8 year drought on April the 29th.

“Being an Australian and to play here with all these Kiwis, hey I found a different kind

HIS/action of respect. I felt a lot of love for these guys – not only for them, but the community and the Breakers.

“This is a loving organisation they give everything. Everything they say – they do. Not many clubs can say that. It’s a pleasure for me and my family to be here. I’m just glad I was part of something special in New Zealand.”

Bruton clearly buys into the morality of the club, its owners and chief executive Richard Clarke. In fact he’s thriving in the environment.

Coach Lemanis finally reaped the rewards after 6 years of loyal service in Auckland – and a couple of failed trips to the playoffs. His cause got a huge lift when Penney failed to secure an NBA after a series of trials in America and was welcomed back to Auckland with open arms.

He ensured the Breakers had the best roster in the league.

But you’ve got to be able to mould superstars into a team.

Take a look at what Sir Alex Ferguson has done for decades at Manchester United or fellow manager Josep Guardiola has managed with his galaxy of footballing superstars at Barcelona.

The Breakers have broken the bogey for New Zealand franchises.

They will lose Finals MVP Thomas Abercrombie. That’s the price of success. The 24 year old “swingman” was in stellar form and is sure to land him a job in the bigger leagues of Europe, or may be even the United States.

But the “family” club seems likely to keep Penney and the majority of their key players in the fold for that all-important title defence in 2011-2012.

Flash back to 2002. It was the high point for the Warriors in the NRL. Until the Breakers breakthrough it was the benchmark for New Zealand teams in the tough trans-Tasman competitions.

There are signs this year’s model may be the real thing, and the Rugby World Cup year of 2011 will also be another watershed for rugby league in New Zealand.

Nine years ago it was the intense coaching of Daniel Anderson that provided the chemistry for a sweet blend of Polynesian talent, Stacey Jones at his best - and hard-nosed Australian professionals.

At their best in the run to the Grand Final they were irresistible. But the Warriors of ‘02 fell heavily to the Roosters at the last hurdle, after riding a national wave of support.

The club has made it to the playoffs 4 times since then. Their best effort under current coach Ivan Cleary was making it all the way to the preliminary final in 2008, including the famous last-gasp win over the top-dogs Melbourne, at their infamous Graveyard.

2010 ended in heartache. After an encouraging run to fifth place in the regular season, they lost-out to the Titans on the Gold Coast and were eliminated from the next round of playoffs by a cruel run of results.

The addition of talented ball-players Feleti Mateo and Krisnan Inu from Parramatta, as well as former Bronco Sean Berrigan had many experts making bold pre-season predictions about the current crop.

However, 2011 started disastrously. Game-breaking winger Manu Vatuvei was injured early in the first game, which they

lost. It was the first of three straight defeats to start the season.

But things have started to click for Cleary.

They reeled off three straight victories on the road, for the first time since 2003, upsetting the Storm, breaking their hoodoo on the Gold Coast and denying the Knights.

It’s been quite a turnaround.

Vatuvei is back in the fold and scoring tries – while Inu and Kevin Locke have been revelations in the backline. The halves pairing of James Maloney and Brett Seymour’s as good as any in the competition. There is grunt galore in the forward pack, with the likes of Russell Packer and Jacob Lillyman.

The Junior Warriors have also provided graduates from their breakthrough moment in the Toyota Cup final last year – with speedster Glen Fisiiahi and backrower Elijah Taylor becoming first team regulars.

Optimism has a habit of being premature, particularly for long-suffering Warriors fans. It’s a gruelling 25 week season.

Injuries and inexplicable form slumps could occur at any time.

But there is some style to go with a fair degree of substance.

May be it’s enough to suggest Cleary could be embarking on the sort of triumphant ride Andrej Lemanis enjoyed in his code.

Once you get that first one out of the way – winning championships suddenly becomes a whole lot easier. **NB - The Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic have also qualified for two of the first 3 finals in netball’s ANZ Championship.

The Northern Mystics beat the Magic in this year’s elimination final, to earn a crack at the unbeaten Queensland Firebirds in Brisbane in the title decider.

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 43

invest

peter hensley

She had heard about scam phone calls, but did not think this was a problem as the caller never asked her for her credit card details or any payment

44 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

Hand me your wallet

J

im called out to Moira “Well will you look at that, Alex is in London and he’s been mugged. He is asking us to send money to tide him over until his new credit card is issued. He is asking for $1,500 but we could manage a little more to help him out, how much do you think we should send?”

Moira looked at him and Jim knew immediately that he was in trouble.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?

We had a coffee with Susan, Alex’s wife yesterday. Don’t you think she would have mentioned that Alex was in the UK?” “And, by the way, if you had been listening to the conversation she mentioned that Alex was visiting his brother in Whangarei, as they planned to play a round of golf at Kauri Cliffs today. What makes you think that he is in London?”

“Well this email for a start” Jim replied. “It says he is attending an urgent business seminar and was attacked on his way to the hotel.

The attackers took his luggage, credit cards and mobile phone. He was lucky enough to have his passport inside his money belt around his waist”.

Jim always looked for the best in people and expected to be treated accordingly.

Moira was more street smart and over the many decades they had been married they had worked well together. Jim providing the hard work and Moira the brains. Their children had encouraged them to get online and Jim enjoyed checking the emails and often checked up on their investment portfolio and bank balances.

Jim admitted he was a novice when it came to the internet, but he knew about

emails and keeping passwords safe. Like most people he kept his user names and passwords reasonably simple and often used the same ones for multiple websites.

“Well” Jim said, “I will just get hold of Susan just to check if Alex needs our help or not”.

Moira looked at Jim disapprovingly, suspecting that Alex had as much chance of being in London as they had of winning Lotto on Saturday night.

Jim rang Susan to find out that Alex’s email had been hijacked by internet pirates.

It turned out that Susan had received a most unusual phone call the week prior from some-one who said they worked for the Microsoft Service Centre. This person said their computer was sending out viruses. She thought it was a bit strange at the time, however the caller was most insistent that she take responsibility for the viruses and he would step her thru the process of fixing the problem.

Alex was out delivering meals on wheels and would not be back for an hour or two and so Susan thought she should help out where she could. She had heard about scam phone calls, but did not think this was a problem as the caller never asked her for her credit card details or any payment.

The caller passed the phone over to the Support Centre supervisor who patiently directed Susan to open a computer file called “Windows Event Viewer” which to the uninformed user listed a huge number of errors, some labeled as critical. The supervisor then said to Susan that he could help her fix the errors.

And so Susan had dutifully followed instructions which directed her to a foreign

HIS/action

website where she downloaded a file which would supposedly fix the errors. What she did not know was that there were no issues to fix and she had installed a “key logger” program which ran in the back ground recording each keystroke they made.

The internet pirates then used another program to search the millions of keystrokes and identified the user names and passwords to their email accounts. Susan had a Gmail account and Alex a Hotmail account.

They then accessed the accounts, immediately changing the passwords thus locking Susan and Alex out and then started sending fake emails outlining a distressing situation and asking everyone in their contacts list for monetary assistance.

Initially Alex and Susan were embarrassed they were caught out, but it did not take long to find out that the unsolicited phone call scam had several variations, as did the request for assistance email.

Jim was all ears as he did not think that this sort of thing happened and least of all that it could happen to his friends and neighbours.

The common result to the phone call about the home computer sending out viruses was a request for credit card details to pay for a virus protection program. Due to increasing number of media stories, this request is becoming more sophisticated and moved onto the key logger approach.

When the internet pirates hijack email accounts there are several areas of commonality. To save time they tend to always use the BCC (blind carbon copy) feature of the program. This allows them to send mass emails to all email addresses in the contacts list. The grammar tends to be poorly constructed and the story contains minimal personal information. There is always a sense of urgency and the money invariably is to be transferred via Western Union. Western Union is a legitimate company providing an excellent service, however it is the transfer service of choice for scammers.

Some pirates include details needed for the money transfer in the initial email, others leave these details out relying on recipients to respond so that they can be more specific with their demands for money. In the end, the pirates are seeking cash.

They rely on the good nature of individuals being prepared to assist their family and friends.

The chances of them being caught and punished for their crimes is zero.

Jim rang off from speaking with Susan, however prior to going back and reporting the story to Moira he undertook some research of his own. He “googled” scams and Microsoft Service Centres and found a plethora of information on the topic. He found out that Western Union had its own webpage dedicated to educating users of its services about common money sending scams.

He also discovered a new scam called a Grandparent scam operating in Canada, where fraudsters call random people pretending to be their grandchild or a person of authority such as a policeman. They outline an emergency situation that requires money to be sent immediately and the scam is perpetrated.

Jim gave a summary of his findings to Moira who was not overly surprised. He had discovered the best response to give the internet pirates when they call, and that is, “I don’t have a computer”. Jim admitted to feeling a little stupid for falling for Alex’s fake email. He went back and read it carefully. It had been sent bcc, the grammar was poor and the story did not quite stand up to close scrutiny. Jim had learnt something new that day.

A copy of Peter Hensley’s disclosure statement is available on request and is free of charge. © Copyright Peter J. Hensley May 2011

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 45

eyes right 46 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

HIS gadgets /GADGETS 48 New Releases The latest in tech toys, including the new HTC Flyer tablet

/TECH 50 Why Are TV Ads So Loud?

The secrets of ampedup commercials revealed

/ONLINE 52 Smartphone security Hackers turn their sights on Android

Mobile security  >> Does your smartphone need a bodyguard?

52 HIS/TECH

HIS/gadgets Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Epson has released its most creative A3+ printer yet for advanced amateur, semi-professional and professional photographers, the Epson Stylus Photo R3000. With nine high capacity cartridges of Epson UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta pigment ink, networking and wireless connectivity, and advanced front-in front-out fine art media handling, the R3000 produces gallery-quality blackand-white prints, plus vivid colour prints with breathtaking blues and violets.

With the latest in wired and wireless networking, the R3000 makes it easy to print from anywhere in your home or studio. The Epson Stylus Photo R3000 comes with a limited time offer of an extra 2 years warranty included, valued at $343 RRP, making 3 years in total under warranty. The R3000 is priced at $1,899 RRP including GST. www.epson.co.nz HTC Flyer tablet HTC Flyer is a portable 7-inch tablet with a magic pen that can do more for you than you can imagine.

From creating masterpieces with a stroke of a paintbrush, to taking multimedia notes or even signing digital documents, HTC Flyer puts you in control of any situation.

With streaming movies at a touch of your finger, HTC Flyer turns any moment into something special.

Take great shots or videos with the 5MP camera and HD camcorder on the HTC Flyer. You won’t have any trouble finding your target on the extrasized 7-inch viewfinder. www.htc.com

Philips SoundSphere An amazing High-fidelity sound experience with hassle-free access to all your music from iTunes. It doesn’t get much better…Curved design of the separate speakers with Philips’ unique free-floating tweeters on top of each speaker delivers sound in all directions for a deeper and wider audio impression with minimized interferences. The result?

Impressive, authentic sound. www.philips.co.uk

48 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

HIS/mall iriver Story HD The slim and lightweight e-reader features the signature; sleek, iriver style, QWERTY keypad, a curve with two-tone colors at the front and back for easy grip and slim design. The Story HD has buttons located from the side to the center of the keypad, featuring the up/down layout instead of the right/left design to make the unit more user friendly than other eBooks – other models feature the right/left buttons for flipping pages. The iriver Story HD has a 3-week battery life, making it ideal for travel, and supports Adobe EPUB and PDF formats with DRM. www.iriver.com

Sony XDR-S16DBP retro radio If you own a really cool radio from the 80s, but you’re unwilling to let go of it after all the money and time you spent getting it fixed up each time it broke down, it’s about time you move on. Good thing for you, Sony has decided to make retro cool again and has released a new DAB/DAB+/ FM digital radio. The XDR-S16DBP may not be from the 80s, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tune into your favorite classic stations that are still around. In addition to producing high-quality radio sounds, it has a clock which you can set as an alarm to wake you up in the morning and has space for up to 10 FM presets – in case you share the radio with somebody and you want a quick and easy way to switch channels. www.sony.com

Nokia X7 Nokia X7 takes smartphone design in a new direction to create something special and truly unique. The brushed stainless steel finish and distinctive lines bring a contemporary look and feel. But great design is about more than just looks. The gently curved body fits perfectly in your hand while the large 4” touch screen is ideal for viewing HD videos and full web pages. Experience all the thrills of high-definition gaming on the massive 4” touch screen. Enjoy the very best HD games from leading publishers – all available at Ovi Store. And when it comes to music, Nokia X7 has it all. Scroll smoothly through album art and control your tracks right from the home screen with one touch of the music app. www.nokia.com

Ashcraft Aria headphones Audiophiles are going to love the Ashcraft Aria headphones. Made to render the advanced audio technology in demand to date, the Ashcraft Aria headphones are also made of recycled materials. It comes in a headband form, wrapped with wood that actually comes from recycled materials from acoustic guitars. It comes with satin spun finished ear cups made from reclaimed aluminum as well as quilted leather to compliment the said ear cups. And if you are wondering about the sound it renders, these headphones are driven by 40 millimeter titanium-plated drivers tuned to deliver extreme clarity as required by hardcore audiophile people. www.ashcraftdesign.com

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 49

tech

WHY ARE TV ADS SO LOUD? WORDS BY DON LINDICH

I

receive a tremendous amount of inquiries regarding television audio.

Readers complain that dialogue is hard to understand and when the commercials come on they are much too loud, far louder than the program’s volume.

As I see it there are two reasons for dialogue that is hard to understand. The first is the way the programs are recorded.

“Dynamic range” is the difference between the softest and loudest sounds in recorded audio, be it music, a movie, or a television show. Modern audio recordings have a lot of dynamic range, and a DVD or Blu-ray disc has audio recorded with dynamic range comparable to the presentation in a movie theatre. When the average home user turns down the volume to the point where the loudest parts aren’t too loud for them, the dialogue is too soft as it is recorded at a much lower level. This has an effect on the commercial volume as well. More on that later.

The second is the transition to flat panel televisions. In the days of tube and

50 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

projection TVs the television had one or more speakers of decent size pointing directly at the viewer. Almost all flat panels now have perfectly smooth front bezels with tiny speakers facing downwards or to the sides, a much poorer arrangement if you want acceptable sound. I don’t seem to get dialogue complaints from readers who have a sound system of some kind connected to the television, though the problems with commercial volume remain.

Why are the commercials so loud?

Theoretically, they can’t play louder than the programme itself. The maximum volume of the commercial recording is the same as the television recording, meaning the commercial can’t play any louder than the loudest explosion in an action movie. However, commercials are recorded at a much higher average volume, effectively turning up the volume of your TV dramatically. When you turn up the TV to hear the dialogue the commercials can startle you when they come on. The cable and terrestrial broadcasters know what is going on as advertisers toy

with the average volume levels, and surely have the means to correct it by equalizing and adjusting it before broadcast. Why they don’t do this on their own is beyond me, other than not wanting to offend their advertising customers. I would think you wouldn’t want to annoy people you are trying to attract as customers by making their TV watching miserable, but the practice remains.

The American Congress has passed legislation called the Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation act, or CALM. The FCC has until Dec. 15, 2011, to come up with rules to regulate commercial volume and must start enforcing them by Dec. 15, 2012. As for the rest of the world, in the meantime you can check your television, disc player or audio receiver for a setting called Dynamic Range Control, DRC, or Midnight Mode. This will compress the dynamic range and make dialogue a bit more understandable while matching the volume of the commercials a bit closer to the programme material.

This will mostly help the dialogue and won’t help much with the commercials.

online

with chillisoft

VIRAL MOBILE? GET PROTECTION WORDS BY BRANDON BAILEY/MCT

M

alicious programmers are a lways looking for new targets.

While smartphones and tablets replace PCs as the gadgets we use for messaging, Web surfing and even doing business, some shady characters are starting to target these devices with new forms of viruses, Trojans and spyware.

Researchers at several security software companies say that in recent months they’ve identified a handful of malicious programs hidden in seemingly innocuous applications, including games and video players, that could make Android phones send information and receive commands without the owners’ knowledge.

In some cases the purpose was unclear.

But one app used a phone’s locating software to transmit the owners’ whereabouts without permission. Another was designed to quietly send repeated text messages, while charging hefty fees to the owner’s wireless account.

The number of threats is tiny compared with the vast array of malware targeting PCs. But even though the most popular smartphone operating systems may be less vulnerable than PCs, experts say the growing popularity of mobile gadgets means malicious coders will inevitably target them more often in the future.

“There hasn’t been an example of malware affecting thousands or millions of devices yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible or it won’t happen,” said analyst Chris Hazelton, who tracks mobile technology for the 451 Group, a tech research firm.

“We don’t want to be the scaremongers,” added another security advisor, “but the development curve for these things is accelerating.”

Researchers say the bulk of the smartphone malware they detected last year was written to target the Symbian operating software used by Nokia, long an international leader in the smartphone industry.

But they and other experts have noted an uptick in malicious applications written for Google’s Android, which late last year overtook Symbian as the most popular

52 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

smartphone operating system, according to Canalys, a tech research firm.

“There’s a growing installed base of Android users. And it’s a very open platform – you can do a lot of good things with it, but if you want, you can also be more nefarious,” said one analyst.

Historically, smartphones have used a variety of operating systems. And since a virus written for one platform wouldn’t necessarily work on another, the pool of potential targets for any particular virus was small. Also, operating systems and mobile Web browsers have technical features that make it difficult to transfer files or data onto a device without the user’s permission.

“They’re much more locked down,” said Andrew Jaquith, a former mobile industry analyst who is now chief technology officer at Perimeter E-Security.

But as smartphones become ubiquitous, the Android platform has become a prominent target. And experts say another reason they’re seeing more Android malware is because Google, seeking to encourage independent developers, makes it relatively easy for anyone to offer an app through the official Android Market.

While Apple is known for closely screening every program offered through its App Store, analysts say Google does virtually no pre-testing or screening of apps in the Android Market. And Android apps can be downloaded from a variety of other sites, which increases the opportunity for bad guys to create a seemingly harmless app that contains malicious code, and then distribute it to an unwitting pool of Android device users.

Android’s design does include a “sandboxing” feature that prevents individual applications from reading or changing information in other applications or the underlying operating system, without first getting permission. That’s why users who download an Android app typically get a message asking permission to access other services or software on the device.

Experts say smartphone users should not agree to anything that seems suspicious, although less savvy users may not understand what they’re allowing.

The Android Market also displays user ratings and reviews, and Google encourages users to consider those before downloading any app. When the company has learned of a problem, it has yanked apps from the Android Market. And twice in the last year, Google has used its ability to remotely remove certain apps from any device that had downloaded them, under the “terms of service” that Android Market users agree to accept.

In the most recent incident, Google disclosed last month that it had remotely killed several malicious apps that were transmitting information about the host device and its location. The company also used its ability to automatically install a security update on the affected devices to prevent further unauthorized transmissions.

“We are adding a number of measures” that would prevent similar apps from being distributed in the future, the company said in a blog post.

While crediting Google with reacting quickly, Hazelton noted that Google only learned of the malware from an independent developer after it had been downloaded an estimated 250,000 times.

And as more users download more kinds of apps from a variety of sources, he said there’s an increasing risk of malware getting past the security safeguards.

Experts say the most important thing owners can do is lock their device with a password.

we protect your digital worlds HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 53

54 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

HIS mindfuel /ONSCREEN 56 Pirates 4 Shiver me timbers, over and over

/BOOKCASE 58 Michael Morrissey Don’t mention the war

/CONSIDER THIS 60 Amy Brooke Media mediocrity writ large

/GEOPOLITICS 62 Michael Morrissey A Republican turns?

More pirates >>

than you can shake a stick at, but how much is too much?

56 HIS/ONSCREEN

onscreen Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides | by steven zeitchik and nicole sperling/LATIMES

Another serving of Sparrow?

W

hen Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End debuted in May 2007, many critics derided the third instalment in the Disney franchise, calling its plot incomprehensible and 169-minute running time torturous.

Newsweek prayed it was the final movie in the series; the New Yorker said a monkey delivered the best performance in the film; and Time suggested an alternative title for the picture: “Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wit’s End.” Yet rather than sheath their swords, Johnny Depp and Co. restocked the eyeliner supply and relaced the corsets, signing on a little more than one year later for a fourth go-round. The copious haul of doubloons that Capt. Jack Sparrow pocketed worldwide suggested that with a little freshening of the franchise, audiences might be lured back aboard for yet another film.

“Even though the reviewers weren’t crazy about the third one, it did almost a billion dollars. That’s a big movie,” says Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who, along with Disney, a new director (Chicago helmer Rob Marshall) and a new supporting cast, including Penelope Cruz, will bring another adventure in the eyepatch saga to theatres this month. “If we do a little less (money) on the fourth one, we’d be happy.”

The return of Pirates of the Caribbean (this one is titled “On Stranger Tides”) is part of a major shift in Hollywood, with studios now routinely pursuing a fourth picture in a series, often after an extended layoff – or even a fifth, in the case of Universal’s current hit Fast Five.

Long-running film series featuring such characters as Tarzan and Charlie Chan were a staple in the early decades of Hollywood. But those faded as TV became popular, giving viewers regular instalments of favoured heroes. In the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, three tended to be the magic number when it came to sequels: Michael Corleone whacked his last pigeon in The Godfather Part III, Neo would outwit no more Sentinels after the third Matrix, Ellie Sattler will no longer study – or battle – rogue dinosaurs after Jurassic Park III. The roots of the custom run deep – three-act storytelling, after all, goes back millenniums. After a third film, the conventional wisdom used to go, audiences move on, and the material has lost creative steam. For years, producers of film franchises

56 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

typically made deals with actors to star in three films.

But now, four and more is becoming common. Besides extending the Fast & Furious series, Universal has also given a new lease on life to the Bourne movies, reviving them with actor Jeremy Renner and director Tony Gilroy when star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass said they were out of ideas after a trio of films. Sony has done the same with Spider-Man – after three instalments pairing Tobey Maguire with director Sam Raimi, Andrew Garfield is taking over the webbed wonder role; (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb is helming the film, which focuses on Spidey’s high school years and is due out next year.

Yet as studios extend franchises, they’re raising questions about whether they’re sacrificing creativity for profit. Are there new stories to tell in a fourth film? Do actors, writers and others want to commit so much time to essentially a single enterprise, or can a new cast and crew grab the baton and infuse new energy (and still please fans)? And will audiences embrace these efforts, or see them as naked grabs for cash?

“Both Spider-Man 2 and Toy Story 2 broke the stigma of sequels and proved that a sequel doesn’t necessarily have to be a lame rehash of the first movie,” said movie critic and historian Leonard Maltin. “There are no rules. ... But then there is the third X-Men and Spider-Man and the third Pirates, which may still be running. I left the theatre after two hours.”

On June 3, Fox will release a fifth X-Men film, a prequel of sorts starring James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, but in a different universe than that depicted by 2009’s origin film centered on the series’ most popular mutant, Wolverine. Critics have wavered over the series’ history, but fans have rewarded the decade-old franchise with close to $800 million in grosses worldwide.

Emma Watts, Fox’s president of production, said she was drawn back into the X-Men universe by a pitch from producer Bryan Singer that placed the mutant superheroes in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis – something she hadn’t seen before.

“It’s not a reboot, and it’s not a fourth in the series,” Watts said of the new X-Men. “It’s an expansion of these characters into another world.”

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HISMAGAZINE.TV  June 2011  57

bookcase BOOKS EDITOR | michael morrissey

Don’t mention the war STORM OF WAR

By Andrew Roberts Penguin Books, $32.

This book has been hailed as the best single volume about the Second World War. Most probably it is. It is clear and compendious yet moves along at a cracking pace. Bristling with statistics, full of acute insights and reflections, it covers the entire war brilliantly. The main text begins with four invasions – Poland, France, Norway and Denmark.

While the Finns repelled the Russian invaders, Hitler’s army triumphantly conquered the other three nations and only came unstuck when it failed to take Moscow in December 1941. Overall, the European aspect – Hitler and his invasions, dominate. It is not until the sixth chapter that we move from Europe to Japan and, in general, Japan gets less coverage than the more crucial European conflict. The account of Germany’s invasion of Russia on June 22 1941 – Hitler’s primary military mistake – is particularly good and the great battles of Kursk and Bagration have never been analysed so clearly and succinctly (though there is an absence of military maps). Potted biographies of the main military leaders are uniformly excellent; weaknesses and eccentricities of character, duly noted. Roberts spares neither brutal Chuikov nor overly cautious and haughty Montgomery, nor weak-willed Keitel; General Wingate liked boiled python, was a nudist and a manic depressive – none of which stopped him from being an inspired leader in Burma.

A criticism might be that while Hitler is, as always, the central figure and his numerous military errors examined, Emperor Hirohito gets little attention though partly this is because he seemed to take a back seat and let his generals do the fighting.

In contrast, Hitler ruined any chance of success by continually sacking his generals – Rundstedt was sacked four times, Guderian, the gifted panzer leader, twice. Though Manstein, Germany’s most brilliant general, was able to retake Kharkov when the odds were seven to one against him, his attempts to reason with Hitler, usually over strategic withdrawals, were always overruled.

This is an aspect that Roberts emphasises more than other historians. If Hitler had let his generals alone, as Stalin (in a reversal of his earlier terrible purges) let his alone, it is conceivable that Germany could have won.

Roberts makes it clear that most of the time the Germans inflicted heavier casualties on the allies. However, this was never enough to stop the Russian “steamroller”. Stalin and his gener-

58 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

als were prepared to send in wave after wave to win a position; they had much more manpower and they had woman power as well. Whereas German women never became part of the conflict, Russia had a million women under arms – at the front and flying fighter planes, their female pilots dubbed “night witches” by the Germans. Roberts reminds us of the appalling rapes perpetrated by an avenging Russian army but also mentions incidents of rape committed by American soldiers.

Part of the book’s attraction is in the colourful titbits that Roberts includes – for instance, when the trapped freezing German soldiers in the Stalingrad pocket opened their food supplies they sometimes found ground pepper and condoms; that Kursk – site of the world’s greatest tank battle – was famous for its nightingales, presumably drowned out by the rumble of clashing tanks.

To fight in the American army, recruits had to be over five feet high and have 12 teeth. Forty per cent failed. Surprisingly, for an historian, Roberts frequently quotes from novels.

In many ways, the most fascinating chapter is the last one called “Conclusions” in which Roberts, like so many historians before, speculates on what might have happened had Hitler not made so many mistakes e.g. using the world’s first military jet as a bomber instead of as a fighter; stop-starting the V1/V2 rocket programme; letting the Brits evacuate from Dunkirk; not letting the full force of Army Group Centre sustain its attack on Moscow; not letting Manstein take charge of the Eastern Front against the Russians; delaying both the invasion of Russia and the start of the battle of Kursk; not consolidating his European victories enabling Germany to become the world’s greatest superpower. The Ukraine could have “enjoyed” a Vichy style government, Robert speculates.

Roberts has a few seeming contradictions. Hitler is observed to have always believed that Normandy would be the site of the D-day invasion and later has the dictator favouring Calais, like nearly everyone else. He remarks that there was nothing inevitable about victory and then later says, once Hitler declared war on the USA (which he didn’t have to do), there wasn’t any hope of Germany winning the war. These are minor points in a truly magnificent account which should be read by students of history, historians, veterans or the general reader who wants a total overview, that is compelling and detailed.

MERCY

By Jussi Adler-Olssen Penguin Books, $40 Increasingly few readers have not succumbed to devouring a Stieg Larsson. To compensate for my Scandinavian lack, I sampled this thriller by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. It

HIS/mindfuel grips from start to finish. The book uses a time-honoured device to keep readers riveted – the dual narrative. The first narrative is about Merete Lynggaard, a glamorous and youthful politician, who has been kidnapped and imprisoned in a featureless steel vault where over several years she is tortured by either complete darkness or blazing light, poor food and verbal abuse. Her situation is reminiscent of brain washing scenarios, Orwell’s 1984, and the Inquisition, who never told their victims what they had been charged with.

However, the primary torture is mental – she does not know who her captors are, why she has been kidnapped and how long she will be held prisoner. When she fails to realise what her “crime” has been, the atmospheres of pressure in the vault are increased. Though the discomfort is relatively mild, the true reason for this is eventually revealed as a warm-up for a hideous death by decompression. Sorry about the minor plot spoiler; however, I will reveal nothing about her captors. You will have to keep reading to make this discovery at 3 am as you race through its pages.

The second narrative is about the obstinate and troublesome

Betty White’s tips for blokes Interview by Kevin Pang If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t) Betty White Random House Don’t kid yourself. Even though her age is 89, you, too, would like a shot at Betty White, stone cold fox.

Her heart, though, remains with her late husband of 18 years, television host Allen Ludden. Their romance is documented in White’s new book, If You Ask Me (and of Course You Won’t).

Though White hasn’t remarried since Ludden died in 1981, she still dispenses advice on what a girl wants. We asked how the typical male schlub could ever court a woman like her.

Q: Is it not manly that I want to bake cookies for a woman?

A: The fact that you think of doing that for a lady, she should appreciate it completely. It’s not feminine – look at all the male chefs! My beloved Allen loved to cook. He would concoct bands of dishes, and he would think they were works of art ... I didn’t always think it was! But it was very sweet.

Q: I’ve only dated a girl for a month and her birthday’s coming up. What’s the most I should spend for a gift?

A: I don’t think you put a monetary value on that gift. If you’ve only been together for a month, sure, you want to impress her. In that month, if there’s some moment that’s very special, find something related to that moment. It would say a lot, believe me. After a year of saying no to Allen’s marriage proposals, Easter came along and he sent me a fluffy white bunny with diamond earrings, and a note that said, “Please say yes.” He knew how much I was an

police detective Carl Morck, crippled by guilt for failing to protect two of his former colleagues in a shootout. Though Morck is regarded as a top rate detective, he keeps irritating his colleagues and superiors, so he is “promoted” to head of Department Q to solve old crimes shelved because they could not be solved.

Unfortunately, he is provided with neither staff nor personal car.

In response to his plea for help, he is given a mysterious male assistant called Assad, allegedly from Syria, who proves to have great organising skills, a razor sharp mind as well as being more than capable in times of assault. Is he just a Man Friday?

Depending on your taste and interest, one of a brace of narratives usually assumes a more compelling grip than the other. It may be the sadist (or the masochist) in me but I was so disturbed and haunted by the trapped woman’s plight, I couldn’t resist the occasional peak ahead. Morck’s slow detection is labyrinthine, and on the way we meet some delightful characters – Marcus Jacobsen, (the bullying chief of homicide), Birte Martinsen (a bullying psychologist), and Morten Holland, a learned dilettante who knows everything about everything except the subject in which he is enrolled to study – as we move to the nail-biting James Bond-like conclusion. I shall watch out for more books by this author. Incidentally, Adler-Olsen shares my Larsson lack though, for competitive reasons, he does not intend to remedy the omission.

animal lover. So when he called that night, instead of saying hello, I answered the phone with, “Yes.” Q: What’s the best compliment to pay a lady?

A: A lady likes to be complimented on her looks, her eyes, her figure. But the personality comments are much appreciated. “You’re fun to be with. I think about you when I’m not around you.”

Q: Is it better to give a lady a handwritten letter, a dozen roses or jewellery?

A: Jewellery is lovely and the obvious answer. But I think a handwritten letter – a lot of guys don’t realize what that means. All through our marriage, I opened something and there’d be a little note from Allen. “Have I told you lately I loved you?” It’s those little romantic touches that tell a lady, “I like a lot of people, but you have a special place in my heart.”

Q: What’s something that men of today don’t do anymore that should make a return?

A: If you’re walking with your lady on the sidewalk, I still like to see a man walking street-side, to protect the lady from traffic. I grew up with that, and I hate to see something like that get lost. I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing. If I sound oldfashioned, it’s because I’m as old as I am! But it’s just polite.

Q: After a good first date, should I call her the next day? Or should I wait a little?

A: Call the next day, by all means. If you both had a lovely evening, and if you don’t call, she’ll think, “Oh, that must have been a drag.” It doesn’t have to be a serious call.

Q: Women say they love men with a sense of humour. But I’m not funny.

What should I do?

A: It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humour in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 59

consider this

amy brooke

Australia puts us to shame. Its highly intelligent, well-educated political commentators publicly stand up to confront the hijacking of Australian society, both from without and within

60 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

Challenging mediocre media

A

ustralian writer and commen tator Bill Muehlenberg recently wrote a fine column questioning whether nation states simply drifted into decline, stagnation and degeneracy, or whether the process is aided by those actively seeking to undermine and subvert them. New Zealanders seem particularly unaware in this respect – but then our education system has seen to that. Its curricula, limited in both breadth and depth, are so far removed from standards of excellence that being able to recognise icons and graphic art counts as literacy, according to PISA assessments. Answers are virtually implied the way NCEA formula-type questions are written, and it’s fine to use texting-type language as an example of competence in English.

All the same, given the long sabotaging of our education system, even denying young children access to phonic teaching methods, so that many thousands belatedly and often unsuccessfully have had to be enrolled in remedial teaching programmes, the damage already well and truly done, I was surprised when a commentator assumed that perhaps the switch to the absurd Look and Say method (where children, ignorant even of the sounds of the alphabet, were expected to recognise whole words) was an innocent experiment.

No doubt most teachers, uncritically embracing whatever destructive theorising originated from our predominately leftwing Ministry of Education, were simply doing as they were told. However, as Bill Muehlenberg points out, when a country is so undermined that it is set for self-destruction,

this is not simply a question of inevitability. On the contrary, one of the great lessons available to students of history is that this valuable subject illuminates the path back through time to where groups dedicated to implement a destructive agenda worked obsessively to subvert their societies.

Our enemy has been cultural Marxism with its aim to eventually destroy the free West, using slogans such as “diversity”, “inclusive”, “relevant”, “progressive” to undermine our stability and fundamentally cohesive values. These, while strongly supporting the rights of individuals to make their own choices, are nevertheless basically essential for Western democracies to survive.

A sobering commentary on what has happened to this country is that, given the lack of genuine intellectual commentary from apparently under-informed and lazy media, we very much lack highly intelligent, well-informed analytical writers and commentators to warn us of the fact that we are actually genuinely under threat, both from without and within.

Ian Wishart’s investigative probing has penetrated where few journalists even bothered to look. Well-informed individuals can be found here and there, particularly within the universities, but they largely do not write publicly, where it counts. Even if they tried, their contributions would probably be suppressed, so trivialised and politically influenced have become our mainstream media.

Far superior thinking to that from largely second-rate newspaper columnists, for example, and from National Radio’s sup-

HIS/mindfuel posedly “liberal”, but basically left-wing commentary can be found in some community newspapers, such as Franklin’s Elocal, ZB commentators such as Leighton Smith, and some of the better blogs and talkback radio. HIS/HERS own Richard Prosser’s valuable columns on our now extraordinary vulnerability to outside attack are an indictment on the mainstream media, as well as on all the political parties in recent years.

The activist Helen Clark’s destructive influence as head of an anti-American, pro-communist China, Labour Party faction very much helped turn a party once dedicated to representing the working class to one infiltrated by left-wing academics with a quite different, socially damaging agenda undermining our social mores, ostensibly dedicated to global disarmament, but in actuality wedded to the highly destructive One World movement, incompatible with Western democracy.

Australia puts us to shame. Its highly intelligent, well-educated political commentators publicly stand up to confront the hijacking of Australian society, both from without and within.

The eminent, widely respected Professor David Flint, who, among his many distinctions and positions held, was former Chairman of the Australian Press Council and the Australian Broadcasting Authority; has an award as a World Jurist Outstanding Legal Scholar; and is the public face of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, has pointed out the importance of our constitutional safeguards against the creeping State. His lucid, brilliant analysis of the dangers which now face New Zealand, even more than Australia, are to be found in his unmissable Twilight of the Elites, and in Malice in Media Land .

It may interest those many thoroughly disillusioned New Zealanders at a loss to any longer know for whom to vote at the next election that Professor Flint has unequivocally written in support of our own 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand initiative – to be found at www.100days.co.nz – the only way forward offering a well-planned, practical, ongoing strategy to reclaim this country for New Zealanders.

One of Bill Muehlenberg’s most important reminders is of the 1963 US congressional record listing the 45 goals of those bent on overthrowing the US, based on an earlier book written by an FBI analyst. Among them, deserving widespread coverage, is the move to get control of the schools to use them as transition pathways for socialism and current communist propaganda, to soften the curriculum, get hold of teacher organizations, and put the party line into textbooks. Equally important? To infiltrate the press, get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions, gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures… to discredit the American Constitution – the list goes on.

If we substitute the institution of the monarchy, and the safeguard it provides, we encounter a level of adolescent comment from columnists who would very probably not

regard themselves as subversive or politicized, but whose lack of respect and ridiculing of individuals shows an extraordinary degree of ignorance – plus that crudeness now found throughout much increasingly arrogant commentary – dismayingly so in particular, but not exclusively, among women columnists.

For example, in the only too common pillorying of Prince Charles, ignoring the many charities he heads for youth in Britain; his care to conserve the heritage of fine British buildings against the invasion of the same minimalist, “brutal” style of architecture which afflicts this country; and his fight to have the teaching of history reinstated in British schools, we find the Dominion-Post’s Linda Burgess’s snide and silly comments on Charles’s pride in showing viewers Highgate… “Heaven help us if some pollen gets up the royal nose”… and referring to a “snotrag”. Rosemary McLeod condescendingly patronises him as a “goofball” in a generally unpleasant putdown. The predictably down-market Jane Bowron feels free to call the hard- working heir to the throne “the old jug-eared one” and to welcome “a sickbag with a picture of Kate and Wills on the front…” Karl du Fresne, while disparaging the British tabloid press, himself loftily calls Charles “a twit”. Journalists obviously feel superior people. The Nelson Mail editorialist also feels free to call Charles “a buffoon”.

Accurate? Objective? Independent? David Flint’s highly readable Malice in Media Land well illustrates why today’s mainstream media are now regarded as tainted institutions, while highlighting “the almost suicidal lack of balance of opinion in public broadcasting”.

The challenging of our trivializing, rude, embarrassingly sheep-like commentators, unelected and unaccountable participants in the political process, has become well overdue – given the very real urgency of these times. © Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz www.100days.co.nz www.summersounds.co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

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geopolitics

mike morrissey

The tall, handsome appealing Prince William and his comely relaxed bride have restored royalty to a happy state of equilibrium not seen in decades

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Reflections on the monarchy

A

s a cynical old leftie whose militantly Irish father denounced royalty as parasites, I am an unlikely candidate to watch the royal wedding but who could avoid at least a passing glimpse?

Two billion was the estimate world-wide – and who did the estimate? The Brits of course. Even allowing for a tad of exaggeration, it must be the most watched event in human history. Perhaps only the future human touchdown on Mars will top it.

While the visible décor – luxury cars, stately carriages, busby-topped Welsh Guards, the constrained royal wave (which keeps RSI of the wrist to a minimum), plus the happily cheering crowds – was much like any other royal wedding, what made this one different was the huge campy undertow enacted in homes around the world. I am referring to girls, ladies, women making themselves a part of the act by wearing tiaras. What might have been mockery in a different context was, in its way, an amiable tribute. The royal wedding had co-opted the blockbuster Hollywood style by spawning a market of spin offs. And note the overnight preference for lace if you’re about to get married.

Then there was the ensuing film William and Kate which daringly showed the prince and his girlfriend ostensibly naked in a state of post-coital bliss in bed. (though mild stuff compared to the notorious “Camillagate Tapes” of 1993 where Camilla said Charles coming back as a Tampax was a “wonderful idea”). The tabloids dubbed Ms Middleton “Waitie Katie”, the stable partner who

waited for feckless William to appreciate her true worth which he did after a well-judged piece of psychological manoeuvering and a short river swim. What can be more galling than a jilted girlfriend appearing happy?

In 1952, such a portrayal would have been unthinkable as well as unnecessary.

More than anything else, the Diana debacle prompted much comment about the relevance or suitability of the monarchy to our time. The tall, handsome appealing Prince William and his comely relaxed bride have restored royalty to a happy state of equilibrium not seen in decades. Surely, there will be no disastrous high speed car chase from escaping paparazzi this time. Already, as part of his grooming for his eventual ascension to the throne, the prince is being entrusted with tasks such as opening the New Zealand Supreme Court, a duty normally performed by the Queen.

The wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton was Buckingham Palace’s classy equivalent to Hollywood’s Pretty Woman wherein a handsome charming “prince” marries a commoner and drives her off in his “carriage” to everlasting happiness. Love has conquered all. And there were moments of humour in the grand drama like the ring that looked as though it might not slip over a bulging knuckle. And how about the Duke of Cambridge promising to stay with his Duchess for richer or poorer? Short of a coup, there is no way a future King of England will have to face the possibility of poverty. Ironically, the ageless Duke of Edinburgh, (ninety this June) looking as magnificently alert as ever, came across as

HIS/mindfuel

younger in demeanour than the aging Charles. And will the Prince of Wales ever grasp the sceptre? The Queen Mother lived to be 101. If the present Queen lives to a comparable age, Charles could predecease her. The crowning of the still youthful Prince William would probably pull three billion watchers.

Media commentary rose to the usual standard of banality customary at such events. The learned and hyper fluent historian Simon Schama made the valid point that royal weddings were all about power alliances, then settled down to wax eloquent about the small forest designed to fresh up the dusty vaults of Westminster Abbey. The five thousand policemen on duty had nothing to do but watch along with the rubbernecking millions, although one was seen frantically fanning his arms skywards to urge crowds to louder cheering, prompting a three year-old bridesmaid to shield her ears from the din. I couldn’t help obscenely speculating whether the day would be horribly jazzed up by a bomb-carrying assassin leaping into the carriage at the critical moment – given the threats – but such an outrage would have been counterproductive even for the usual suspects.

This stupendous media coup might well make republicans a teensy bit lachrymose, though they can take heart from the fact that monarchies are shrinking rather than growing. There are only 29 monarchies remaining in the world, though Queen Elizabeth 11 reigns over 16 countries. This total of 44 monarch-

ruled countries is dwarfed by the 152 countries who do not have monarchs. Absolute monarchs are only to be found in Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland and the Vatican City (!)

The remainder are to be found in Europe, Africa and Asia, plus one in the Pacific (Tonga). Thailand presents the best case for the desirability of a monarch to stabilise the country in troubled times e.g when competing warlord generals make a grab for power as they did in 1992. Countries that have dictators endure a governance virtually no different from absolute monarchs.

The power-mad dictators are generally worse than the monarchs in the way they exercise power. The democratic countries have, as it were, their splendidly tiered monarchical cake and constitutionally manage to eat it as well.

After Thailand, England may be monarchy’s second most desired roost. Supremely tolerant of satirical insult and able to endure scorching scandal – unlike, one surmises, the rulers of African and Asian countries – the English monarch is a handy backstop in times of crisis. There is nothing like a rousing speech from a monarch during wartime or national emergencies to steady frazzled nerves. When everyone else is verging on panic, the monarch’s job is to stay calm. The Queen has made an exemplary job of staying calm during her long reign. The monarchy then, arguably has value for England if for no other reason than giving the vox populi a day of harmless happiness just when things look gloomy. If only it didn’t cost so much.

HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011 63

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64 HISMAGAZINE.TV June 2011

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